•v

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THE FOOD OF THE GODS, AND HOW IT

CAME TO EARTH.

TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM.
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.
THE INVISIBLE MAN.
LOVE AND MR. LEW I SHAM.
ANTICIPATIONS.
MANKIND IN THE MAKING.
A MODERN UTOPIA.
KIPPS: THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL.

frontispiece.

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

A BICYCLING IDYLL

BY

H. G. WELLS

AUTHOR OF " THE TIME MACHINE," " THE WONDERFUL VISIT," ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATION'S BY J. AYTON SYMINGTON

gorfc
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

All rights reserved

/

'

COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1896. Reprinted
September, 1897 ; May, 1906 ; March, 1913.
Special edition, in paper covers, June, 1905.

Nortooofc J3resg

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

MY DEAR MOTHER

268532

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE STORY i
THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. HOOPDRIVER . . .17

THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG LADY IN GREY 29

ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY 40

How MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED . . . -59

THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER'S HEART . . 69

OMISSIONS 76

THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER .... 79

How MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO HASLEMERE . . 84

How MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED MIDHURST . . 92

AN INTERLUDE 99

OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF THE ZEITGEIST . 105

THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST 109

THE PURSUIT 127

AT BOGNOR 136

viii Contents

PAGE

THE MOONLIGHT RIDE 157

THE SURBITON INTERLUDE 167

THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER . . . .178
THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER . . . .185
THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE LION . . .197

THE RESCUE EXPEDITION 207

MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT . . . .231
THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRIVER .... 256

IN THE NEW FOREST 280

AT THE RUFUS STONE 297

THE ENVOY 3!7

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE

THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTER IN THE
STORY

IF you (presuming you are of the sex that does
such things) — if you had gone into the Drapery
Emporium — which is really only magnificent for
shop — of Messrs. Antrobus & Co., — a perfectly
fictitious " Co.," by the bye — of Putney, on the
1 4th of August, 1895, had turned to the right-hand
side, where the blocks of white linen and piles of
blankets rise up to the rail from which the pink
and blue prints depend, you might have been served
by the central figure of this story that is now begin-
ning. He would have come forward, bowing and
swaying, he would have extended two hands with
largish knuckles and enormous cuffs over the counter,
and he would have asked you, protruding a pointed
chin and without the slightest anticipation of pleasure

2 The Wheels of Chance

in his manner, what he might have the pleasure of
showing you. Under certain circumstances — as, for
instance, hats, baby linen, gloves, silks, lace, or cur-
tains — he would simply have bowed politely, and with
a drooping expression, and making a kind of circular
sweep, invited you to " step this way," and so led
you beyond his ken ; but under other and happier
conditions, — huckaback, blankets, dimity, cretonne,
linen, calico, are cases in point, — he would have
requested you to take a seat, emphasising the hos-
pitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a
chair back in a spasmodic manner, and so pro-
ceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit his goods for
your consideration. Under which happier circum-
stances you might — if of an observing turn of mind
and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman —
have given the central figure of this story less cursory
attention.

Now if you had noticed anything about him, it
would have been chiefly to notice how little he was
noticeable. He wore the black morning coat, the
black tie, and the speckled grey nether parts (de-
scending into shadow and mystery below the counter)
of his craft. He was of a pallid complexion, hair of
a kind of dirty fairness, greyish eyes, and a skimpy,
immature moustache under his peaked indeterminate
nose. His features were all small, but none ill-shaped.

\

4 The Wheels of Chance

A rosette of pins decorated the lappel of his coat.
His remarks, you would observe, were entirely what
people used to call cliche, formulae not organic to the
occasion, but stereotyped ages ago and learnt years
since by heart. " This, madam," he would say, " is
selling very well." " We are doing a very good article
at four three a yard." "We could show you some-
thing better, of course." " No trouble, madam, I as-
sure you." Such were the simple counters of his
intercourse. So, I say, he would have presented him-
self to your superficial observation. He would have
danced about behind the counter, have neatly refolded
the goods he had shown you, have put on one side
those you selected, extracted a little book with a car-
bon leaf and a tinfoil sheet from a fixture, made you
out a little bill in that weak nourishing hand peculiar
to drapers, and have bawled " Sayn ! " Then a puffy
little shop-walker would have come into view, looked
at the bill for a second, very hard (showing you a part-
ing down the middle of his head meanwhile), have
scribbled a still more flourishing J. M. all over the
document, have asked you if there was nothing more,
have stood by you — supposing that you were paying
cash — until the central figure of this story reappeared
with the change. One glance more at him, and
the puffy little shop-walker would have been bow-
ing you out, with fountains of civilities at work all

The Wheels of Chance 5

about you. And so the interview would have termi-
nated.

But real literature, as distinguished from anecdote,
does not concern itself with superficial appearances
alone. Literature is revelation. Modern literature is
indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the earnest
author to tell you what you would not have seen —
even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that
you would not have seen about this young man, and
the thing of the greatest moment to this story, the
thing that must be told if the book is to be written,
was — let us face it bravely — the Remarkable Condi-
tion of this Young Man's Legs.

Let us approach the business with dispassionate
explicitness. Let us assume something of the scien-
tific spirit, the hard, almost professorial tone of the
conscientious realist. Let us treat this young man's
legs as a mere diagram, and indicate the points of
interest with the unemotional precision of a lecturer's
pointer. And so to our revelation. On the internal
aspect of the right ankle of this young man you would
have observed, ladies and gentlemen, a contusion and
an abrasion ; on the internal aspect of the left ankle a
contusion also ; on its external aspect a large yellow-
ish bruise. On his left shin there were two bruises,
one a leaden yellow graduating here and there into
purple, and another, obviously of more recent date, of

6 The Wheels of Chance

a blotchy red — tumid and threatening. Proceeding
up the left leg in a spiral manner, an unnatural hard-
ness and redness would have been discovered on the
upper aspect of the calf, and above the knee and on
the inner side, an extraordinary expanse of bruised
surface, a kind of closely stippled shading of contused
points. The right leg would be found to be bruised
in a marvellous manner all about and under the knee,
and particularly on the interior aspect of the knee.
So far we may proceed with our details. Fired by
these discoveries, an investigator might perhaps have
pursued his inquiries further — to bruises on the
shoulders, elbows, and even the finger joints, of the
central figure of our story. He had indeed been
bumped and battered at an extraordinary number of
points. But enough of realistic description is as good
as a feast, and we have exhibited enough for our pur-
pose. Even in literature one must know where to
draw the line.

Now the reader may be inclined to wonder how
a respectable young shopman should have got his legs,
and indeed himself generally, into such a dreadful
condition. One might fancy that he had been sitting
with his nether extremities in some complicated ma-
chinery, a threshing-machine, say, or one of those
hay-making furies. But Sherlock Holmes (now
happily dead) would have fancied nothing of the

The Wheels of Chance 7

kind. He would have recognised at once that the
bruises on the internal aspect of the left leg, con-
sidered in the light of the distribution of the other
abrasions and contusions, pointed unmistakably to
the violent impact of the Mounting Beginner upon
the bicycling saddle, and that the ruinous state of
the right knee was equally eloquent of the con-
cussions attendant on that person's hasty, frequently
causeless, and invariably ill-conceived descents. One
large bruise on the shin is even more characteristic
of the 'prentice cyclist, for upon every one of them
waits the jest of the unexpected treadle. You try at
least to walk your machine in an easy manner, and
whack ! — you are rubbing your shin. So out of
innocence we ripen. Two bruises on that place
mark a certain want of aptitude in learning, such as
one might expect in a person unused to muscular
exercise. Blisters on the hands are eloquent of
the nervous clutch of the wavering rider. And so
forth, until Sherlock is presently explaining, by the
help of the minor injuries, that the machine ridden
is an old-fashioned affair with a fork instead of the
diamond frame, a cushioned tire, well worn on the
hind wheel, and a gross weight all on of perhaps
three- and-forty pounds.

The revelation is made. Behind the decorous
figure of the attentive shopman that I had the honour

•\

The Wheels of Chance 9

of showing you at first, rises a vision of a nightly
struggle, of two dark figures and a machine in a
dark road, — the road, to be explicit, from Roe-
hampton to Putney Hill, — and with this vision is
the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping
and grunting, a shouting of " Steer, man, steer ! " a
wavering unsteady flight, a spasmodic turning of the
missile edifice of man and machine, and a collapse.
Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central
figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rub-
bing his leg at some new place, and his friend, sym-
pathetic (but by no means depressed), repairing the
displacement of the handle-bar.

Thus even in a shop assistant does the warmth of
manhood assert itself, and drive him against all the
conditions of his calling, against the counsels of
prudence and the restrictions of his means, to seek
the wholesome delights of exertion and danger and
pain. And our first examination of the draper re-
veals beneath his draperies — the man ! To which
initial fact (among others) we shall come again in
the end.

II

Bur enough of these revelations. The central fig-
ure of our story is now going along behind the coun-
ter, a draper indeed, with your purchases in his arms,
to the warehouse, where the various articles you have
selected will presently be packed by the senior porter
and sent to you. Returning thence to his particular
place, he lays hands on a folded piece of gingham,
and gripping the corners of the folds in his hands,
begins to straighten them punctiliously. Near him is
an apprentice, apprenticed to the same high calling
of draper's assistant, a ruddy, red-haired lad in a very
short tailless black coat and a very high collar, who is
deliberately unfolding and refolding some patterns of
cretonne. By twenty-one he too may hope to be a
full-blown assistant, even as Mr. Hoopdriver. Prints
depend from the brass rails above them, behind are
fixtures full of white packages containing, as inscrip-
tions testify, Lino, Hd Sk, and Mull. You might
imagine to see them that the two were both intent
upon nothing but smoothness of textile and rectitude
of fold. But to tell the truth, neither is thinking of

10

The Wheels of Chance 1 1

the mechanicaljiuties in hand. The assistant is dream-
ing of the delicious time — only four hours off now —
when he will resume the tale of his bruises and abra-
sions. The apprentice is nearer the long long thoughts
of boyhood, and his imagination rides cap-a-pie through
the chambers of his brain, seeking some knightly quest
in honour of that Fair Lady, the last but one of the girl
apprentices to the dress-making upstairs. He inclines
rather to street fighting against revolutionaries — be-
cause then she could see him from the window.

Jerking them back to the present comes the puffy
little shop-walker, with a paper in his hand. The
apprentice becomes extremely active. The shop-
walker eyes the goods in hand. " Hoopdriver," he
says, "how's that line of g-sez-x ginghams?"

Hoopdriver returns from an imaginary triumph
over the uncertainties of dismounting. "They're
going fairly well, sir. But the larger checks seem
hanging."

The shop-walker brings up parallel to the counter.
" Any particular time when you want your holidays ? "
he asks.

Hoopdriver pulls at his skimpy moustache. " No
— Don't want them too late, sir, of course."

" How about this day week ? "

Hoopdriver becomes rigidly meditative, gripping
the corners of the gingham folds in his hands. His

12 The Wheels of Chance

face is eloquent of conflicting considerations. Can he
learn it in a week ? That's the question. Otherwise
Briggs will get next week, and he will have to wait
until September — when the weather is often uncer-
tain. He is naturally of a sanguine disposition. All
drapers have to be, or else they could never have the
faith they show in the beauty, washability, and unfad-
ing excellence of the goods they sell you. The decis-
ion comes at last. "That'll do me very well," said
Mr. Hoopdriver, terminating the pause.

The die is cast.

The shop-walker makes a note of it and goes on to
Briggs in the "dresses," the next in the strict scale of
precedence of the Drapery Emporium. Mr. Hoop-
driver in alternating spasms anon straightens his ging-
ham and anon becomes meditative, with his tongue in
the hollow of his decaying wisdom tooth.

Ill

AT supper that night, holiday talk held undisputed
sway. Mr. Pritchard spoke of " Scotland," Miss Isaacs
clamoured of Bettws-y-Coed, Mr. Judson displayed a
proprietary interest in the Norfolk Broads. " I? "
said Hoopdriver when the question came to him.
" Why, cycling, of course."

" You're never going to ride that dreadful machine
of yours, day after day?" said Miss Howe of the Cos-
tume Department.

" I am," said Hoopdriver as calmly as possible, pull-
ing at the insufficient moustache. " I'm going for a
Cycling Tour. Along the South Coast."

"Well, all I hope, Mr. Hoopdriver, is that you'll
get fine weather," said Miss Howe. " And not come
any nasty croppers."

" And done forget some tinscher of arnica in yer
bag," said the junior apprentice in the very high col-
lar. (He had witnessed one of the lessons at the top
of Putney Hill.)

" You stow it," said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking hard
and threateningly at the junior apprentice, and sud-

The Wheels of Chance 15

denly adding in a tone of bitter contempt, -~
" Jampot."

" I'm getting fairly safe upon it now," he told Miss
Howe.

At other times Hoopdriver might have further re-
sented the satirical efforts of the apprentice, but his
mind was too full of the projected Tour to admit any
petty delicacies of dignity. He left the supper table
early, so that he might put in a good hour at the des-
perate gymnastics up the Roehampton Road before it
would be time to come back for locking up. When
the gas was turned off for the night he was sitting on
the edge of his bed, rubbing arnica into his knee — a
new and very big place — and studying a Road Map of
the South of England. Briggs of the " dresses," who
shared the room with him, was sitting up in bed and
trying to smoke in the dark. Briggs had never been
on a cycle in his life, but he felt Hoopdriver's inex-
perience and offered such advice as occurred to him.

" Have the machine thoroughly well oiled," said
Briggs, " carry one or two lemons with you, don't tear
yourself to death the first day, and sit upright. Never
lose control of the machine, and always sound the bell
on every possible opportunity. You mind those things,
and nothing very much can't happen to you, Hoop-
driver — you take my word."

He would lapse into silence for a minute, save per-

1 6 The Wheels of Chance

haps for a curse or so at his pipe, and then break out
with an entirely different set of tips.

"Avoid running over dogs, Hoopdriver, whatever
you do. It's one of the worst things you can do to
run over a dog. Never let the machine buckle —
there was a man killed only the other day through his
wheel buckling — don't scorch, don't ride on the
foot-path, keep your own side of the road, and
if you see a tram-line, go round the corner at once,
and hurry off into the next county — and always light
up before dark. You mind just a few little things like
that, Hoopdriver, and nothing much can't happen to
you — you take my word."

" Right you are !" said Hoopdriver. " Good-night,
old man."

" Good-night," said Briggs, and there was silence
for a space, save for the succulent respiration of the
pipe. Hoopdriver rode off into Dreamland on his
machine, and was scarcely there before he was pitched
back into the world of sense again. — Something —
what was it?

"Never oil the steering. It's fatal," a voice that
came from round a fitful glow of light, was saying,
"And clean the chain daily with black-lead. You
mind just a few little things like that — "

" Lord love us ! " said Hoopdriver, and pulled the
bedclothes over his ears.

THE RIDING FORTH OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
IV

ONLY those who toil six long days out of the seven,
and all the year round, save for one brief glorious
fortnight or ten days in the summer time, know the
exquisite sensations of the First Holiday Morning.
All the dreary, uninteresting routine drops from you
suddenly, your chains fall about your feet. All at
once you are Lord of yourself, Lord of every hour in
the long, vacant day; you may go where you please,
call none Sir or Madame, have a lappel free of pins,
doff your black morning coat, and wear the colour of
your heart, and be a Man. You grudge sleep, you
grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on
those exquisite moments. There will be no more
rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go
dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-
darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious
cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty
meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women,
for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far
17

1 8 The Wheels of Chance

the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune
in your hands. Thereafter, every night, comes a
pang, a spectre, that will not be exorcised — the
premonition of the return. The shadow of going
back, of being put in the cage again for another
twelve months, lies blacker and blacker across the
sunlight. But on the first morning of the ten the
holiday has no past, and ten days seems as good as
infinity.

And it was fine, full of a promise of glorious days,
a deep blue sky with dazzling piles of white cloud
here and there, as though celestial haymakers had
been piling the swathes of last night's clouds into
cocks for a coming cartage. There were thrushes in
the Richmond Road, and a lark on Putney Heath.
The freshness of dew was in the air; dew or the relics
of an overnight shower glittered on the leaves and
grass. Hoopdriver had breakfasted early by Mrs.
Gunn's complaisance. He wheeled his machine up
Putney Hill, and his heart sang within him. Half-
way up, a dissipated-looking black cat rushed home
across the road and vanished under a gate. All the
big red-brick houses behind the variegated shrubs
and trees had their blinds down still, and he would
not have changed places with a soul in any one of
them for a hundred pounds.

He had on his new brown cycling suit — a hand-

The Wheels of Chance 19

some Norfolk jacket thing for 3o/ — and his legs —
those martyr legs — were more than consoled by thick
chequered stockings, " thin in the foot, thick in the
leg," for all they had endured. A neat packet of
American cloth behind the saddle contained his
change of raiment, and the bell and the handle-bar
and the hubs and lamp, albeit a trifle freckled by
wear, glittered blindingly in the rising sunlight. And
at the top of the hill, after only one unsuccessful
attempt, which, somehow, terminated on the green,
Hoopdriver mounted, and with a stately and cautious
restraint in his pace, and a dignified curvature of
path, began his great Cycling Tour along the South-
ern Coast.

There is only one phrase to describe his course at
this stage, and that is — voluptuous curves. He did
not ride fast, he did not ride straight, an exacting
critic might say he did not ride well — but he rode
generously, opulently, using the whole road and even
nibbling at the footpath. The excitement never
flagged. So far he had never passed or been passed
by anything, but as yet the day was young and the
road was clear. He doubted his steering so much
that, for the present, he had resolved to dismount at
the approach of anything else upon wheels. The
shadows of the trees lay very long and blue across
the road, the morning sunlight was like amber fire.

,20 The Wheels of Chance

At the cross-roads at the top of West Hill, where the
cattle trough stands, he turned towards Kingston and
set himself to scale the little bit of ascent. An early
heath-keeper, in his velveteen jacket, marvelled at
his efforts. And while he yet struggled, the head of
a carter rose over the brow.

At the sight of him Mr. Hoopdriver, according to
his previous determination, resolved to dismount.
He tightened the brake, and the machine stopped
dead. He was trying to think what he did with his
right leg whilst getting off. He gripped the handles
and released the brake, standing on the left pedal
and waving his right foot in the air. Then — these
things take so long in the telling — he found the
machine was falling over to the right. While he was
deciding upon a plan of action, gravitation appears
to have been busy. He was still irresolute when he
found the machine on the ground, himself kneeling
upon it, and a vague feeling in his mind that again
Providence had dealt harshly with his shin. This
happened when he was just level with the heath-
keeper. The man in the approaching cart stood up
to see the ruins better.

" That ain't the way to get off," said the heath-
keeper.

Mr. Hoopdriver picked up the machine. The
handle was twisted askew again. He said something

The Wheels of Chance 21

under his breath. He would have to unscrew the
beastly thing.

" That ain't the way to get off," repeated the heath-
keeper, after a silence.

"/know that," said Mr. Hoopdriver, testily, deter-
mined to overlook the new specimen on his shin at
any cost. He unbuckled the wallet behind the sad-
dle, to get out a screw hammer.

"If ypu know it ain't the way to get off —
whaddyer do it for?" said the heath-keeper, in a
tone of friendly controversy.

Mr. Hoopdriver got out his screw hammer and
went to the handle. He was annoyed. "That's my
business, I suppose," he said, fumbling with the
screw. The unusual exertion had made his hands
shake frightfully.

The heath-keeper became meditative, and twisted
his stick in his hands behind his back. "You've
broken yer 'andle, ain't yer?" he said presently.
Just then the screw hammer slipped off the nut. Mr.
Hoopdriver used a nasty, low word.

"They're trying things, them bicycles," said
the heath-keeper, charitably. "Very trying." Mr.
Hoopdriver gave the nut a vicious turn and sud-
denly stood up — he was holding the front wheel
between his knees. "I wish," said he, with a catch
in his voice, "I wish you'd leave off staring at me."

The Wheels of Chance 23

Then with the air of one who has delivered an ulti-
matum, he began replacing the screw hammer in the
wallet.

The heath-keeper never moved. Possibly he
raised his eyebrows, and certainly he stared harder
than he did before. "You're pretty unsociable," he
said slowly, as Mr. Hoopdriver seized the handles and
stood ready to mount as soon as the cart had passed.

The indignation gathered slowly but surely. " Why
don't you ride on a private road of your own if no
one ain't to speak to you?" asked the heath-keeper,
perceiving more and more clearly the bearing of the
matter. "Can't no one make a passin' remark to
you, Touchy? Ain't I good enough to speak to you?
Been struck wooden all of a sudden? "

Mr. Hoopdriver stared into the Immensity of the
Future. He was 'rigid with emotion. It was like
abusing the Lions in Trafalgar Square. But the heath-
keeper felt his honour was at stake.

"Don't you make no remarks to V*#," said the
keeper as the carter came up broadside to them.
"'Ers a bloomin' dock, 'e is. 'E don't converse
with no one under a earl. 'E's off to Windsor, 'e is;
that's why 'e's stickin' his be'ind 6irt so haughty.
Pride! Why, 'e's got so much of it, 'e has to carry
some of it in that there bundle there,* for fear 'e'd
bust if 'e didn't ease hisself a bit— '-£— "

24

The Wheels of Chance 25

But Mr. Hoopdriver heard no more. He was
hopping vigorously along the road, in a spasmodic
attempt to remount. He missed the treadle once
and swore viciously, to the keeper's immense delight.
"Nar! Nar! " said the heath-keeper.

In another moment Mr. Hoopdriver was up, and
after one terrific lurch of the machine, the heath-
keeper dropped out of earshot.

Mr. Hoopdriver would have liked to look back at
his enemy, but he usually twisted round and upset if
he tried that. He had to imagine the indignant
heath-keeper telling the carter all about it. He tried
to infuse as much disdain as possible into his retreat-
ing aspect.

He drove on his sinuous way down the dip by the
new mere and up the little rise to the crest of the hill
that drops into Kingston Vale; and so remarkable
is the psychology of cycling, that he rode all the
straighter and easier because the emotions the heath-
keeper had aroused relieved his mind of the constant
expectation of collapse that had previously unnerved
him. To ride a bicycle properly is very like a love
affair ; chiefly it is a matter of faith. Believe you do
it, and the thing is done; doubt, and, for the life of
you, you cannot.

Now you may perhaps imagine that as he rode on,
his feelings towards the heath-keeper were either

26 The Wheels of Chance

vindictive or remorseful, — vindictive for the aggrava-
tion or remorseful for his own injudicious display of
ill temper. As a matter of fact, they were nothing
of the sort. A sudden, a wonderful gratitude, pos-
sessed him. The Glory of the Holidays had resumed
its sway with a sudden accession of splendour. At
the crest of the hill he put his feet upon the foot-
rests, and now riding moderately straight, went, with
a palpitating brake, down that excellent descent. A
new delight was in his eyes, quite over and above the
pleasure of rushing through the keen, sweet, morning
air. He reached out his thumb and twanged his bell
out of sheer happiness.

"'He'sabloomin' Book— he is!"' saidMr. Hoop-
driver to himself, in a soft undertone, as he went
soaring down the hill, and again, "'He's a bloomin'
Dook ! ' " He opened his mouth in a silent laugh.
It was having a decent cut did it. His social supe-
riority had been so evident that even a man like that
noticed it. No more Manchester Department for
ten days ! Out of Manchester, a Man. The draper
Hoopdriver, the Hand, had vanished from existence.
Instead was a gentleman, a man of pleasure, with a
five-pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver at
various convenient points of his person. At any rate
as good as a Dook, if not precisely in the peerage.
Involuntarily at the thought of his funds Hoopdriver' s

The Wheels of Chance 27

right hand left the handle and sought his breast pocket,
to be immediately recalled by a violent swoop of the
machine towards the cemetery. Whirroo ! Just
missed that half-brick! Mischievous brutes there
were in the world to put such a thing in the road.
Some blooming 'Any or other! Ought to prosecute
a few of these roughs, and the rest would know bet-
ter. That must be the buckle of the wallet was rat-
tling on the mud-guard. How cheerfully the wheels
buzzed !

The cemetery was very silent and peaceful, but the
Vale was waking, and windows rattled and squeaked
up, and a white dog came out of one of the houses
and yelped at him. He got off, rather breathless, at
the foot of Kingston Hill, and pushed up. Half-
way up, an early milk chariot rattled by him ; two
dirty men with bundles came hurrying down. Hoop-
driver felt sure they were burglars, carrying home the
swag.

It was up Kingston Hill that he first noticed a
peculiar feeling, a slight tightness at his knees; but
he noticed, too, at the top that he rode straighter
than he did before. The pleasure of riding straight
blotted out these first intimations of fatigue. A man
on horseback appeared ; Hoopdriver, in a tumult of
soul at his own temerity, passed him. Then down
the hill into Kingston, with the screw hammer, behind

28 The Wheels of Chance

in the wallet, rattling against the oil can. He passed,
without misadventure, a fruiterer's van and a sluggish
cartload of bricks. And in Kingston Hoopdriver,
with the most exquisite sensations, saw the shutters
half removed from a draper's shop, and two yawning
youths, in dusty old black jackets and with dirty
white comforters about their necks, clearing up the
planks and boxes and wrappers in the window, pre-
paratory to dressing it out. Even so had Hoopdriver
been on the previous day. But now, was he not a
bloomin' Dook, palpably in the sight of common
men? Then round the corner to the right — bell
banged furiously — and so along the road to Surbiton.
Whoop for Freedom and Adventure ! Every now
and then a house with an expression of sleepy sur-
prise would open its eye as he passed, and to the
right of him for a mile or so the weltering Thames
flashed and glittered. Talk of your/0/V de vivre !
Albeit with a certain cramping sensation about the
knees and calves slowly forcing itself upon his
attention.

\

\

THE SHAMEFUL EPISODE OF THE YOUNG
LADY IN GREY

Now you must understand that Mr. Hoopdriver
was not one of your fast young men. If he had been
King Lemuel, he could not have profited more by his
mother's instructions. He regarded the feminine
sex as something to bow to and smirk at from a safe
distance. Years of the intimate remoteness of a
counter leave their mark upon a man. It was an
adventure for him to take one of the Young Ladies
of the establishment to church on a Sunday. Few
modern young men could have merited less the
epithet "Dorg." But I have thought at times that
his machine may have had something of the blade in
its metal. Decidedly it was a machine with a past.
Mr. Hoopdriver had bought it second-hand from
Hare's in Putney, and Hare said it had had several
owners. Second-hand was scarcely the word for it,
and Hare was mildly puzzled that he should be sell-
ing such an antiquity. He said it was perfectly
29

3O The Wheels of Chance

sound, if a little old-fashioned, but he was absolutely
silent about its moral character. It may even have
begun its career with a poet, say, in his glorious
youth. It may have been the bicycle of a Really
Bad Man. No one who has ever ridden a cycle of
any kind but will witness that the things are unac-
countably prone to pick up bad habits — and keep
them.

It is undeniable that it became convulsed with the
most violent emotions directly the Young Lady in
Grey appeared. It began an absolutely unprece-
dented Wabble — unprecedented so far as Hoop-
driver's experience went. It "showed off" — the
most decadent sinuosity. It left a track like one of
Beardsley's feathers. He suddenly realised, too,
that his cap was loose on his head and his breath a
mere remnant.

The Young Lady in Grey was also riding a bicycle.
She was dressed in a beautiful bluish-grey, and the
sun behind her drew her outline in gold and left the
rest in shadow. Hoopdriver was dimly aware that
she was young, rather slender, dark, and with a bright
colour and bright eyes. Strange doubts possessed
him as to the nature of her nether costume. He had
heard of such things of course. French, perhaps.
Her handles glittered; a jet of sunlight splashed off
her bell blindingly. She was approaching the high

The Wheels of Chance 31

road along an affluent from the villas of Surbiton.
The roads converged slantingly. She was travelling^
about the same pace as Mr. Hoopdriver. The appear-
ances pointed to a meeting at the fork of the roads.

Hoopdriver was seized with a horrible conflict of
doubts. By contrast with her he rode disgracefully.
Had he not better get off at once and pretend some-
thing was wrong with his treadle? Yet even the end
of getting off was an uncertainty. That last occa-
sion on Putney Heath! On the other hand, what
would happen if he kept on? To go very slow
seemed the abnegation of his manhood. To crawl
after a mere schoolgirl ! Besides, she was not riding
very fast. On the other hand, to thrust himself in
front of her, consuming the road in his tendril-like
advance, seemed an incivility — greed. He would
leave her such a very little. His business training
made him prone to bow and step aside. If only one
could take one's hands off the handles, one might
pass with a silent elevation of the hat, of course. But
even that was a little suggestive of a funeral.

Meanwhile the roads converged. She was looking
at him. She was flushed, a little thin, and had very
bright eyes. Her red lips fell apart. She may have
been riding hard, but it looked uncommonly like a
faint smile. And the things were — yes ! — rational*!
Suddenly an impulse to bolt from the situation

The Wheels of Chance 33

became clamorous. Mr. Hoopdriver pedalled con-
vulsively, intending to pass her. He jerked against
some tin thing on the road, and it flew up between
front wheel and mud-guard. He twisted round
towards her. Had the machine a devil ?

At that supreme moment it came across him that
he would have done wiser to dismount. He gave a
frantic ' whoop ' and tried to get round, then, as he
seemed falling over, he pulled the handles straight
again and to the left by an instinctive motion, and
shot behind her hind wheel, missing her by a hair's
breadth. The pavement kerb awaited him. He
tried to recover, and found himself jumped up on
the pavement and riding squarely at a neat wooden
paling. He struck this with a terrific impact and
shot forward off his saddle into a clumsy entangle-
ment. Then he began to tumble over sideways, and
completed the entire figure in a sitting position on
the gravel, with his feet between the fork and the
stay of the machine. The concussion on the gravel
shook his entire being. He remained in that posi-
tion, wishing that he had broken his neck, wishing
even more heartily that he had never been born.
The glory of life had departed. Bloomin' Dook,
indeed ! These unwomanly wome%!

There was a soft whirr, the click of a brake, two
footfalls, and the Young Lady in Grey stood holding

34 The Wheels of Chance

her machine. She had turned round and come back
to him. The warm sunlight now was in her face.
"Are you hurt? " she said. She had a pretty, clear,
girlish voice. She was really very young — quite a
girl, in fact. And rode so well! It was a bitter
draught.

Mr. Hoopdriver stood up at once. "Not a bit,"
he said, a little ruefully. He became painfully aware
that large patches of gravel scarcely improve the
appearance of a Norfolk suit. "I'm" very sorry
indeed — "

"It's my fault," she said, interrupting and so
saving him on the very verge of calling her 'Miss.'
(He knew 'Miss' was wrong, but it was deep-
seated habit with him.) "I tried to pass you on the
wrong side." Her face and eyes seemed all alive.
"It's my place to be sorry."

"But it was my steering — "

" I ought to have seen you were a Novice " — with
a touch of superiority. "But you rode so straight
coming along there ! "

She really was — dashed pretty. Mr. Hoopdriver 's
feelings passed the nadir. When he spoke again
there was the faintest flavour of the aristocratic in
his voice.

"It's my first ride, as a matter of fact. But that's
no excuse for my ah ! blundering — "

The Wheels of Chance 35

"Your finger's bleeding," she said, abruptly.

He saw his knuckle was barked. "I didn't feel
it,7' he said, feeling manly.

"You don't at first. Have you any sticking-
plaster? If not — " She balanced her machine
against herself. She had a little side pocket, and
she whipped out a small packet of sticking-plaster
with a pair of scissors in a sheath at the side, and
cut off a generous portion. He had a wild impulse
to ask her to stick it on for him. Controlled. " Thank
you," he said.

"Machine all right? " she asked, looking past him
at the prostrate vehicle, her hands on her handle-bar.
For the first time Hoopdriver did not feel proud of
his machine.

He turned and began to pick up the fallen fabric.
He looked over his shoulder, and she was gone, turned
his head over the other shoulder down the road, and
she was riding off. " Orf ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver.
" Well, I'm blowed ! — Talk about Slap Up ! " (His
aristocratic refinement rarely adorned his speech in
his private soliloquies.) His mind was whirling.
One fact was clear. A most ^delightful and novel
human being had flashed across his horizon and was
going out of his life again. The Holiday madness
was in his blood. She looked round !

At 'that he rushed his machine into the road, and

36 The Wheels of Chance

began a hasty ascent. Unsuccessful. Try again.
Confound it, will he never be able to get up on the
thing again? She will be round the corner in a
minute. Once more. Ah ! Pedal ! Wabble ! No !
Right this time ! He gripped the handles and put
his head down. He would overtake her.

The situation was primordial. The Man beneath
prevailed for a moment over the civilised super-
structure, the Draper. He pushed at the pedals with
archaic violence. So Palaeolithic man may have
ridden his simple bicycle of chipped flint in pursuit
of his exogamous affinity. She vanished round the
corner. His effort was Titanic. What should he
say when he overtook her ? That scarcely disturbed
him at first. How fine she had looked, flushed with
the exertion of riding, breathing a little fast, but
elastic and active ! Talk about your ladylike, home-
keeping girls with complexions like cold veal ! But
what should he say to her ? That was a bother. And
he could not lift his cap without risking a repetition
of his previous ignominy. She was a real Young
Lady. No mistake about that ! None of your bloom-
ing shop girls. (There is no greater contempt in the
world than that of shop men for shop girls, unless it
be that of shop girls for shop men.) Phew! This
was work. A certain numbness came and went at
his knees.

The Wheels of Chance 37

"May I ask to whom I am indebted?" he panted
to himself, trying it over. That might do. Lucky
he had a card case ! A hundred a shilling — while
you wait. He was getting winded. The road was
certainly a bit uphill. He turned the corner and
saw a long stretch of road, and a grey dress vanish,
ing. He set his teeth. Had he gained on her at
all? "Monkey on a gridiron! " yelped a small boy.
Hoopdriver redoubled his efforts. His breath be-
came audible, his steering unsteady, his pedalling
positively ferocious. A drop of perspiration ran
into his eye, irritant as acid. The road really was
uphill beyond dispute. All his physiology began to
cry out at him. A last tremendous effort brought
him to the corner and showed yet another extent of
shady roadway, empty save for a baker's van. His
front wheel suddenly shrieked aloud. " Oh Lord ! "
said Hoopdriver, relaxing.

Anyhow she was not in sight. He got off un-
steadily, and for a moment his legs felt like wisps of
cotton. He balanced his machine against the grassy
edge of the path and sat down panting. His hands
were gnarled with swollen veins and shaking palpably,
his breath came viscid.

"I'm hardly in training yet," he remarked. His
legs had gone leaden. "I don't feel as though I'd
had a mouthful of breakfast." Presently he slapped

38 The Wheels of Chance

his side pocket and produced therefrom a brand-new
cigarette case and a packet of Vansittart's Red Her-
ring cigarettes. He filled the case. Then his eye
fell with a sudden approval on the ornamental
chequering of his new stockings. The expression
in his eyes faded slowly to abstract meditation.

"She was a stunning girl," he said. "I wonder
if I shall ever set eyes on her again. And she knew
how to ride, too ! Wonder what she thought of me."

The phrase * bloomin' Dock ' floated into his mind
with a certain flavour of comfort.

He lit a cigarette, and sat smoking and medi-
tating. He did not even look up when vehicles
passed. It was perhaps ten minutes before he roused
himself. "What rot it is! What's the good of
thinking such things," he said. " I'm only a blessed
draper's assistant." (To be exact, he did not say
blessed. The service of a shop may polish a man's
exterior ways, but the 'prentices' dormitory is an
indifferent school for either manners or morals.)
He stood up and began wheeling his machine towards
Esher. It was going to be a beautiful day, and the
hedges and trees and the open country were all glori-
ous to his town-tired eyes. But it was a little
different from the elation of his start.

"Look at the gentleman wizzer bicitle," said a
nursemaid on the path to a personage in a perambu-

The Wheels of Chance 39

lator. That healed him a little. " ' Gentleman
wizzer bicitle,' — 'bloomin' Dock' — I can't look
so very seedy," he said to himself.

"I wonder — I should just like to know — "
There was something very comforting in the track
of her pneumatic running straight and steady along
the road before him. It must be hers. No other
pneumatic had been along the road that morning.
It was just possible, of course, that he might see
her once more — coming back. Should he try and
say something smart? He speculated what man-
ner of girl she might be. Probably she was one
of these here New Women. He had a persuasion
the cult had been maligned. Anyhow she was a
Lady. And rich people, too ! Her machine couldn't
have cost much under twenty pounds. His mind
came round and dwelt some time on her visible
self. Rational dress didn't look a bit unwomanly.
However, he disdained to be one of your fortune-
hunters. Then his thoughts drove off at a tangent.
He would certainly have to get something to eat at
the next public house.

ON THE ROAD TO RIPLEY
VI

IN the fulness of time, Mr. Hoopdriver drew near
the Marquis of Granby at Esher, and as he came
under the railway arch and saw the inn in front of
him, he mounted his machine again and rode bravely
up to the doorway. Burton and biscuit and cheese
he had, which, indeed, is Burton in its proper com-
pany ; and as he was eating there came a middle-
aged man in a drab cycling suit, very red and moist
and angry in the face, and asked bitterly for a lemon
squash. And he sat down upon the seat in the bar
and mopped his face. But scarcely had he sat down
before he got up again and stared out of the doorway.

" Damn ! " said he. Then, " Damned Fool ! "

"Eigh?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking round sud-
denly with a piece of cheese in his cheek.

The man in drab faced him. " I called myself a
Damned Fool, sir. Have you any objections?"

" Oh ! — None. None," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
"I thought you spoke to me. I didn't hear what
you said."

4o

41

42 The Wheels of Chance

"To have a contemplative disposition and an en-
ergetic temperament, sir, is hell. Hell, I tell you.
A contemplative disposition and a phlegmatic tem-
perament, all very well. But energy and philoso-
phy _!»

Mr. Hoopdriver looked as intelligent as he could,
but said nothing.

"There's no hurry, sir, none whatever. I came
out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the
scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get
on the accursed machine, than off I go hammer and
tongs ; I never look to right or left, never notice a
flower, never see a view, get hot, juicy, red, — like a
grilled chop. Here I am, sir. Come from Guildford
in something under the hour. Why, sir?"

Mr. Hoopdriver shook his head.

"Because I'm a damned fool, sir. Because I've
reservoirs and reservoirs of muscular energy, and one
or other of them is always leaking. It's a most inter-
esting road, birds and trees, I've no doubt, and way-
side flowers, and there's nothing I should enjoy more
than watching them. But I can't. Get me on that
machine, and I have to go. Get me on anything, and
I have to go. And I don't want to go a bit. Why
> should a man rush about like a rocket, all pace and
fizzle? Why? It makes me furious. I can assure
you, sir, I go scorching along the road, and cursing

The Wheels of Chance 43

aloud at myself for doing it. A quiet, dignified,
philosophical man, that's what I am — at bottom;
and here I am dancing with rage and swearing like a
drunken tinker at a perfect stranger —

" But my day's wasted. I've lost all that country
road, and now I'm on the fringe of London. And I
might have loitered all the morning ! Ugh ! Thank
Heaven, sir, you have not the irritable temperament,
that you are not goaded to madness by your endoge-
nous sneers, by the eternal wrangling of an uncom-
fortable soul and body. I tell you, I lead a cat and
dog life — But what is the use of talking ? — It's
all of a piece ! "

He tossed his head with unspeakable self-disgust,
pitched the lemon squash into his mouth, paid for it,
and without any further remark strode to the door.
Mr. Hoopdriver was still wondering what to say when
his interlocutor vanished. There was a noise of a
foot spurning the gravel, and when Mr. Hoopdriver
reached the doorway, the man in drab was a score of
yards Londonward. He had already gathered pace.
He pedalled with ill-suppressed anger, and his head
was going down. In another moment he flew swiftly
out of sight under the railway arch, and Mr. Hoop-
driver saw him no more.

VII

AFTER this whirlwind Mr. Hoopdriver paid his
reckoning and — being now a little rested about the
muscles of the knees — resumed his saddle and rode
on in the direction of Ripley, along an excellent but
undulating road. He was pleased to find his com-
mand over his machine already sensibly increased.
He set himself little exercises as he went along and
performed them with variable success. There was,
for instance, steering in between a couple of stones,
say a foot apart, a deed of little difficulty as far as
the front wheel is concerned. But the back wheel,
not being under the sway of the human eye, is apt to
take a vicious jump over the obstacle, which sends a
violent concussion all along the spine to the skull,
and will even jerk a loosely fastened hat over the
eyes, and so lead to much confusion. And again,
there was taking the hand or hands off the hagdle-
bar, a thing simple in itself, but complex in its
consequences. This particularly was a feat Mr.
Hoopdriver desired to do, for several divergent
reasons; but at present it simply led to convulsive
44

The Wheels of Chance 45

balancings and novel and inelegant modes of dis-
mounting.

The human nose is, at its best, a needless excres-
cence. There are those who consider it ornamental,
and would regard a face deprived of its assistance
with pity or derision; but it is doubtful whether our
esteem is dictated so much by a sense of its absolute
beauty as by the vitiating effect of a universally preva-
lent fashion. In the case of bicycle students, as in
the young of both sexes, its inutility is aggravated by
its persistent annoyance — it requires constant atten-
tion. Until one can ride with one hand, and search
for, secure, and use a pocket handkerchief with the
other, cycling is necessarily a constant series of
descents. Nothing can be further from the author's
ambition than a wanton realism, but Mr. Hoop-
driver's nose is a plain and salient fact, and face it
we must. And, in addition to this inconvenience,
there are flies. Until the cyclist can steer with one
hand, his face is given over to Beelzebub. Con-
templative flies stroll over it, and trifle absently with
its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to dis-
lodge them is to shake the head forcibly and to
writhe one's features violently. This is not only a
lengthy and frequently ineffectual method, but one
exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. And
again, sometimes the beginner rides for a space with

46 The Wheels of Chance

one eye closed by perspiration, giving him a waggish
air foreign to his mood and ill calculated to overawe
the impertinent. However, you will appreciate now
the motive of Mr. Hoopdriver's experiments. He
presently attained sufficient dexterity to slap himself
smartly and violently in the face with his right hand,
without certainly overturning the machine; but his
pocket handkerchief might have been in California
for any good it was to him while he was in the saddle.
Yet you must not think that because Mr. Hoop-
driver was a little uncomfortable, he was unhappy in
the slightest degree. In the background of his con-
sciousness was the sense that about this time Briggs
would be half-way through his window dressing, and
Gosling, the apprentice, busy, with a chair turned
down over the counter and his ears very red, trying
to roll a piece of huckaback — only those who have
rolled pieces of huckaback know quite how detestable
huckaback is to roll — and the shop would be dusty
and, perhaps, the governor about and snappy. And
here was quiet and greenery, and one mucked about
as the desire took one, without a soul to see, and
here was no wailing of "Sayn," no folding of rem-
nants, no voice to shout, " Hoopdriver, forward ! "
And once he almost ran over something wonderful, a
little, low, red beast with a yellowish tail, that went
rushing across the road before him. It was the first

The Wheels of Chance 47

weasel he had ever seen in his cockney life. There
were miles of this, scores of miles of this before him,
pinewood and oak forest, purple, heathery moorland
and grassy down, lush meadows, where shining rivers
wound their lazy way, villages with square-towered,
flint churches, and rambling, cheap, and hearty inns,
clean, white, country towns, long downhill stretches,
where one might ride at one's ease (overlooking a jolt
or so), and far away, at the end of it all, — the sea.

What mattered a fly or so in the dawn of these
delights? Perhaps he had been dashed a minute by
the shameful episode of the Young Lady in Grey, and
perhaps the memory of it was making itself a little
lair in a corner of his brain from which it could
distress him in the retrospect by suggesting that he
looked like a fool; but for the present that trouble
was altogether in abeyance. The man in drab —
evidently a swell — had spoken to him as his equal,
and the knees of his brown suit and the chequered
stockings were ever before his eyes. (Or, rather, you
could see the stockings by carrying the head a little
to one side.) And to feel, little by little, his mastery
over this delightful, treacherous machine, growing
and growing ! — Every half-mile or so his knees
reasserted themselves, and he dismounted and sat
awhile by the roadside.

It was at a charming little place between Esher

48

The Wheels of Chance 49

and Cobham, where a bridge crosses a stream, that
Mr. Hoopdriver came across the other cyclist in
brown. It is well to notice the fact here, although
the interview was of the slightest, because it hap-
pened that subsequently Hoopdriver saw a great deal
more of this other man in brown. The other cyclist
in brown had a machine of dazzling newness, and a
punctured pneumatic lay across his knees. He was
a man of thirty or more, with a whitish face, an
aquiline nose, a lank, flaxen moustache, and very fair
hair, and he scowled at the job before him. At the
sight of him Mr. Hoopdriver pulled himself together,
and rode by with the air of one born to the wheel.
"A splendid morning," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "and
a fine surface."

"The morning and you and the surface be ever-
lastingly damned ! " said the other man in brown as
Hoopdriver receded. Hoopdriver heard the mumble
and did not distinguish the words, and he felt a
pleasing sense of having duly asserted the wide sym-
pathy that binds all cyclists together, of having
behaved himself as becomes one of the brotherhood
of the wheel. The other man in brown watched his
receding aspect. "Greasy proletarian," said the
other man in brown, feeling a prophetic dislike.
" Got a suit of brown, the very picture of this. One
would think his sole aim in life had been to carica-

50 The Wheels of Chance

ture me. It's Fortune's way with me. Look at his
insteps on the treadles! Why does Heaven make
such men?"

And having lit a cigarette, the other man in
brown returned to the business in hand.

Mr. Hoopdriver worked up the hill towards Cob-
ham to a point that he felt sure was out of sight of
the other man in brown, and then he dismounted and
pushed his machine; until the proximity of the village
and a proper pride drove him into the saddle again.

VIII

BEYOND Cobham came a delightful incident, de-
lightful, that is, in its beginning if a trifle indetermi-
nate in the retrospect. It was perhaps half-way between
Cobham and Ripley. Mr. Hoopdriver dropped down
a little hill, where, unfenced from the road, fine mossy
trees and bracken lay on either side ; and looking up
he saw an open country before him, covered with
heather and set with pines, and a yellow road run-
ing across it, and half a mile away perhaps, a little
grey figure by the wayside waving something white.
" Never ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver with his hands
tightening on the handles.

He resumed the treadles, staring away before him,
jolted over a stone, wabbled, recovered, and began
riding faster at once, with his eyes ahead. " It can't
be," said Hoopdriver.

He rode his straightest, and kept his pedals spin-
ning, albeit a limp numbness had resumed possession
of his legs. " It can't be," he repeated, feeling every
moment more assured that it was. " Lord ! I don't
know even now," said Mr. Hoopdriver (legs awhirl-
ing), and then, " Blow my legs ! "

/-•//*

The Wheels of Chance 53

But he kept on and drew nearer and nearer,
breathing hard and gathering flies like a flypaper.
In the valley he was hidden. Then the road began
to rise, and the resistance of the pedals grew. As he
crested the hill he saw her, not a hundred yards away
from him. " It's her!" ne said. "It's her — right
enough. It's the suit's done it," — which was truer
even than Mr. Hoopdriver thought. But now she was
not waving her handkerchief, she was not even look-
ing at him. She was wheeling her machine slowly
along the road towards him, and admiring the pretty
wooded hills towards Weybridge. She might have
been unaware of his existence for all the recognition
he got.

For a moment horrible doubts troubled Mr. Hoop-
driver. Had that handkerchief been a dream ? Be-
sides which he was deliquescent and scarlet, and felt
so. It must be her coquetry — the handkerchief was
indisputable. Should he ride up to her and get off,
or get off and ride up to her? It was as well she
didn't look, because he would certainly capsize if he
lifted his cap. Perhaps that was her consideration.
Even as he hesitated he was upon her. She must
have heard his breathing. He gripped the brake.
Steady ! His right leg waved in the air, and he
came down heavily and staggering, but erect. She
turned her eyes upon him with admirable surprise.

54 The Wheels of Chance

Mr. Hoopdriver tried to smile pleasantly, hold up
his machine, raise his cap, and bow gracefully. In-
deed, he felt that he did as much. He was a man
singularly devoid of the minutiae of self-conscious-
ness, and he was quite unaware of a tail of damp
hair lying across his forehead, and just clearing his
eyes, and of the general disorder of his coiffure.
There was an interrogative pause.

" What can I have the pleasure — " began Mr. Hoop-
driver, insinuatingly. "I mean" (remembering his
emancipation and abruptly assuming his most aristo-
cratic intonation), "can I be of any assistance to
you?"

The Young Lady in Grey bit her lower lip and said
very prettily, " None, thank you." She glanced away
from him and made as if she would proceed.

" Oh ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, taken aback and
suddenly crestfallen again. It was so unexpected.
He tried to grasp the situation. Was she coquetting?
Or had he — ?

" Excuse me, one minute," he said, as she began to
wheel her machine again.

" Yes ? " she said, stopping and staring a little, with
the colour in her cheeks deepening.

" I should not have alighted if I had not — imag-
ined that you — er, waved something white — " He
paused.

The Wheels of Chance 55

She looked at him doubtfully. He had seen it !
She decided that he was not an unredeemed rough
taking advantage of a mistake, but an innocent soul
meaning well while seeking happiness. " I did wave
my handkerchief," she said. " I'm very sorry. I am
expecting — a friend, a gentleman," — she seemed to
flush pink for a minute. " He is riding a bicycle and
dressed in — in brown ; and at a distance, you know — "

" Oh, quite ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, bearing up in
manly fashion against his bitter disappointment. " Cer-
tainly."

" I'm Awfully sorry, you know. Troubling you to
dismount, and all that."

" No trouble. 'Ssure you," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
mechanically and bowing over his saddle as if it was a
counter. Somehow he could not find it in his heart
to tell her that the man was beyond there with a punct-
ured pneumatic. He looked back along the road
arid tried to think of something else to say. But the
gulf in the conversation widened rapidly and hope-
lessly. " There's nothing further," began Mr. Hoop-
driver desperately, recurring to his stock of cliches.

"Nothing, thank you," she said decisively. And
immediately, "This is the Ripley road?"

" Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Ripley is
about two miles from here. According to the mile-
stones."

56

The Wheels of Chance 57

"Thank you," she said warmly. "Thank you so
much. I felt sure there was no mistake. And I
really am Awfully sorry — "

" Don't mention it," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Don't
mention it." He hesitated and gripped his handles
to mount. " It's me," he said, " ought to be sorry."
Should he say it? Was it an impertinence? Any-
how ! — " Not being the other gentleman, you know."

He tried a quietly insinuating smile that he knew
for a grin even as he smiled it ; felt she disapproved
— that she despised him, was overcome with shame at
her expression, turned his back upon her, and began
(very clumsily) to mount. He did so with a horrible
swerve, and went pedalling off, riding very badly, as
he was only too painfully aware. Nevertheless, thank
Heaven for the mounting ! He could not see her
because it was so dangerous for him to look round,
but he could imagine her indignant and pitiless. He
felt an unspeakable idiot. One had to be so careful
what one said to Young Ladies, and he'd gone and
treated her just as though she was only a Larky Girl.
It was unforgivable. He always was a fool. You
could tell from her manner she didn't think him a
gentleman. One glance, and she seemed to look clear
through him and all his pretence. What rot it was
venturing to speak to a girl like that ! With her edu-
cation she was bound to see through him at once.

58 The Wheels of Chance

How nicely she spoke too ! nice clear-cut words !
She made him feel what slush his own accent was.
And that last silly remark. What was it? — < Not
being the other gentleman, you know ! ' No point
in it. And 'gentleman!' What could she be think-
ing of him?

But really the Young Lady in Grey had dismissed
Hoopdriver from her thoughts almost before he had
vanished round the corner. She had thought no ill
of him. His manifest awe and admiration of her had
given her not an atom of offence. But for her just
now there were weightier things to think about,
things that would affect all the rest of her life. She
continued slowly walking her machine London ward.
Presently she stopped. " Oh ! Why doesn't he
come?" she said, and stamped her foot petulantly.
Then, as if in answer, coming down the hill among
the trees, appeared the other man in brown, dis-
mounted and wheeling his machine.

HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WAS HAUNTED
IX

As Mr. Hoopdriver rode swaggering along the »j
Ripley road, it came to him, with an unwarrantable "'
sense of comfort, that he had seen the last of the
Young Lady in Grey. But the ill-concealed bladery
of the machine, the present machinery of Fate, the i
deus ex machina, so to speak, was against him. The
bicycle, torn from this attractive young woman, grew
heavier and heavier, and continually more unsteady.
It seemed a choice between stopping at Ripley or
dying in the flower of his days. He went into the
Unicorn, after propping his machine outside the door,
and, as he cooled down and smoked his Red Herring
cigarette while the cold meat was getting ready, he
saw from the window the Young Lady in Grey and
the other man in brown, entering Ripley.

They filled him with apprehension by looking at

the house which sheltered him, but the sight of his

bicycle, propped in a drunk and incapable attitude

against the doorway, humping its rackety mud-guard

59

60 The Wheels of Chance

and leering at them with its darkened lantern eye,
drove them away — so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver
— to the spacious swallow of the Golden Dragon.
The young lady was riding very slowly, but the other
man in brown had a bad puncture and was wheeling
his machine. Mr. Hoopdriver noted his flaxen
moustache, his aquiline nose, his rather bent shoul-
ders, with a sudden, vivid dislike.

The maid at the Unicorn is naturally a pleasant
girl, but she is jaded by the incessant incidence
of cyclists, and Hoopdriver 's mind, even as he
conversed with her in that cultivated voice of his —
of the weather, of the distance from London, and of
the excellence of the Ripley road — wandered to
the incomparable freshness and brilliance of the
Young Lady in Grey. As he sat at meat he kept
turning his head to the window to see what signs
there were of that person, but the face of the Golden
Dragon displayed no appreciation of the delightful
morsel it had swallowed. As an incidental conse-
quence of this distraction, Mr. Hoopdriver was for
a minute greatly inconvenienced by a mouthful of
mustard. After he had called for his reckoning he
went, his courage being high with meat and mustard,
to the door, intending to stand, with his legs wide
apart and his hands deep in his pockets, and stare
boldly across the road. But just then the other man

The Wheels of Chance 61

in brown appeared in the gateway of the 'Golden
Dragon ' yard — it is one of those delightful inns that
date from the coaching days — wheeling his punct-
ured machine. He was taking it to Flambeau's, the
repairer's. He looked up and saw Hoopdriver,
stared for a minute, and then scowled darkly.

But Hoopdriver remained stoutly in the doorway
until the other man in brown had disappeared into
Flambeau's. Then he glanced momentarily at the
Golden Dragon, puckered his mouth into a whistle
of unconcern, and proceeded to wheel his machine
into the road until a sufficient margin for mounting
was secured.

Now, at that time, I say, Hoopdriver was rather
desirous than not of seeing no more of the Young Lady
in Grey. The other man in brown he guessed was
her brother, albeit that person was of a pallid fair-
ness, differing essentially from her rich colouring;
and, besides, he felt he had made a hopeless fool of
himself. But the afternoon was against him, intoler-
ably hot, especially on the top of his head, and the
virtue had gone out of his legs to digest his cold
meat, and altogether his ride to Guildford was
exceedingly intermittent. At times he would walk,
at times lounge by the wayside, and every public
house, in spite of Briggs and a sentiment of economy,
meant a lemonade and a dash of bitter. (For that is

62

The Wheels of Chance 63

the experience of all those who go on wheels, that
drinking begets thirst, even more than thirst begets
drinking, until at last the man who yields becomes a
hell unto himself, a hell in which the fire dieth not,
and the thirst is not quenched.) Until a pennyworth
of acrid green apples turned the current that threat-
ened to carry him away. Ever and again a cycle, or
a party of cyclists, would go by, with glittering wheels
and softly running chains, and on each occasion, to
save his self-respect, Mr. Hoopdriver descended and
feigned some trouble with his saddle. Each time he
descended with less trepidation.

He did not reach Guildford until nearly four
o'clock, and then he was so much exhausted that he
decided to put up there for the night, at the Yellow
Hammer Coffee Tavern. And after he had cooled a
space and refreshed himself with tea and bread and
butter and jam, — the tea he drank noisily out of the
saucer, — he went out to loiter away the rest of the
afternoon. Guildford is an altogether charming old
town, famous, so he learnt from a Guide Book, as the
scene of Master Tupper's great historical novel of
Stephen Langton, and it has a delightful castle, all
set about with geraniums and brass plates commem-
orating the gentlemen who put them up, and its
Guildhall is a Tudor building, very pleasant to see,
and in the afternoon the shops are busy and the people

The Wheels of Chance 65

going to and fro make the pavements look bright and
prosperous. It was nice to peep in the windows and
see the heads of the men and girls in the drapers'
shops, busy as busy, serving away. The High Street
runs down at an angle of seventy degrees to the
horizon (so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver, whose
feeling for gradients was unnaturally exalted), and
it brought his heart into his mouth to see a cyclist
ride down it, like a fly crawling down a window pane.
The man hadn't even a brake. He visited the castle
early in the evening and paid his twopence to ascend
the Keep.

At the top, from the cage, he looked down over
the clustering red roofs of the town and the tower of
the church, and then going to the southern side sat
down and lit a Red Herring cigarette, and stared
away south over the old bramble-bearing, fern-beset
ruin, at the waves of blue upland that rose, one behind
another, across the Weald, to the lazy altitudes of
Hindhead and Butser. His pale grey eyes were full
of complacency and pleasurable anticipation. To-
morrow he would go riding across that wide valley.

He did not notice any one else had come up the
Keep after him until he heard a soft voice behind
him saying: "Well, Miss Beaumont, here's the view."
Something in the accent pointed to a jest in the
name.

66 The Wheels of Chance

"It's a dear old town, brother George," answered
another voice that sounded familiar enough, and
turning his head, Mr. Hoopdriver saw the other man
in brown and the Young Lady in Grey, with their backs
towards him. She turned her smiling profile towards
Hoopdriver. "Only, you know, brothers don't call
their sisters — "

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Hoop-
driver. " Damn ! " said the other man in brown,
quite audibly, starting as he followed her glance.

Mr. Hoopdriver, with a fine air of indifference,
resumed the Weald. "Beautiful old town, isn't
it?" said the other man in brown, after a quite
perceptible pause.

"Isn't it?" said the Young Lady in Grey.

Another pause began.

"Can't get alone anywhere," said the other man
in brown, looking round.

Then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived clearly that he
was in the way, and decided to retreat. It was just
his luck of course that he should stumble at the head
of the steps and vanish with indignity. This was
the third time that he'd seen him, and the fourth
time her. And of course he was too big a fat-head
to raise his cap to her ! He thought of that at the
foot of the Keep. Apparently they aimed at the
South Coast just as he did. He'd get up betimes

The Wheels of Chance 67

the next day and hurry off to avoid her — them, that
is. It never occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver that Miss
Beaumont and her brother might do exactly the same
thing, and that evening, at least, the peculiarity of a
brother calling his sister "Miss Beaumont" did not
recur to him. He was much too preoccupied with
an analysis of his own share of these encounters.
He found it hard to be altogether satisfied about the
figure he had cut, revise his memories as he would.

Once more quite unintentionally he stumbled
upon these two people. It was about seven o'clock.
He stopped outside a linen draper's and peered over
the goods in the window at the assistants in torment.
He could have spent a whole day happily at that.
He told himself that he was trying to see how they
dressed out the brass lines over their counters, in
a purely professional spirit, but down at the very
bottom of his heart he knew better. The customers
were a seeondary consideration, and it was only after
the lapse of perhaps a minute that he perceived that
among them was — the Young Lady in Grey! He
turned away from the window at once, and saw the
other man in brown standing at the edge of the
pavement and regarding him with a very curious
expression of face.

There came into Mr. Hoopdriver' s head the curi-
ous problem whether he was to be regarded as a

68 The Wheels of Chance

nuisance haunting these people, or whether they
were, to be regarded as a nuisance haunting him.
He abandoned the solution at last in despair, quite
unable to decide upon the course he should take
at the next encounter, whether he should scowl
savagely at the couple or assume an attitude elo-
quent of apology and propitiation.

THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER'S
HEART

X

MR. HOOPDRIVER was (in the days of this story) a
poet, though he had never written a line of verse. Or
perhaps romancer will describe him better. Like I
know not how many of those who do the fetching and
carrying of life, — a great number of them certainly,
— his real life was absolutely uninteresting, and if he
had faced it as realistically as such people do in Mr.
Gissing's novels, he would probably have come by
way of drink to suicide in the course of a year. But
that was just what he had the natural wisdom not to
do. On the contrary, he was always decorating his
existence with imaginative tags, hopes, and poses, de-
liberate and yet quite effectual self-deceptions ; his
experiences were mere material for a romantic super-
structure. If some power had given Hoopdriver the
' giftie ' Burns invoked, ' to see oursels as ithers see
us,' he would probably have given it away to some one
else at the very earliest opportunity. His entire life,
69

The Wheels of Chance 71

you must understand, was not a continuous romance,
but a series of short stories linked only by the general
resemblance of their hero, a brown-haired young fel-
low commonly, with blue eyes and a fair moustache,
graceful rather than strong, sharp and resolute rather
than clever, (cp., as the scientific books say, p. 2).
Invariably this person possessed an iron will. The
stories fluctuated indefinitely. The smoking of a
cigarette converted Hoopdriver's hero into something
entirely worldly, subtly rakish, with a humorous twin-
kle in the eye and some gallant sinning in the
background. You should have seen Mr. Hoopdriver
promenading the brilliant gardens at Earl's Court
on an early-closing night. His meaning glances !
(I dare not give the meaning.) Such an influence
as the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would suffice
to divert the story into absolutely different channels,
make him a white-souled hero, a man still pure, walk-
ing untainted and brave and helpful through miry
ways. The appearance of some daintily gloved frock-
coated gentleman with buttonhole and eyeglass com-
plete, gallantly attendant in the rear of customers,
served again to start visions of a simplicity essentially
Cromwell-like, of sturdy plainness, of a strong, silent
man going righteously through the world. This day
there had predominated a fine leisurely person im-
maculately clothed, and riding on an unexceptional

72 The Wheels of Chance

machine, a mysterious person — quite unostentatious,
but with accidental self-revelation of something over
the common, even a " bloomin' Book," it might be
incognito, on the tour of the South Coast.

You must not think that there was any telling of
these stories of this life-long series by Mr. Hoop-
driver. He never dreamt that they were known to
a soul. If it were not for the trouble, I would, I
think, go back and rewrite this section from the
beginning, expunging the statements that Hoopdriver
was a poet and a romancer, and saying instead that
he was a playwright and acted his own plays. He
was not only the sole performer, but the entire audi-
ence, and the entertainment kept him almost continu-
ously happy. Yet even that playwright comparison
scarcely expresses all the facts of the case. After all,
very many of his dreams never got acted at all, possi-
bly indeed, most of them, the dreams of a solitary
walk for instance, or of a tramcar ride, the dreams
dreamt behind the counter while trade was slack and
mechanical foldings and rollings occupied his muscles.
Most of them were little dramatic situations, crucial
dialogues, the return of Mr. Hoopdriver to his native
village, for instance, in a well-cut holiday suit and
natty gloves, the unheard asides of the rival neigh-
bours, the delight of the old ' mater,' the intelligence
— "A ten-pound rise all at once from Antrobus,

The Wheels of Chance 73

mater. Whad d'yer think of that?" or again, the
first whispering of love, dainty and witty and tender,
to the girl he served a few days ago with sateen, or
a gallant rescue of generalised beauty in distress from
truculent insult or ravening dog.

So many people do this — and you never suspect it.
You see a tattered lad selling matches in the street,
and you think there is nothing between him and the
bleakness of immensity, between him and utter abase-
ment, but a few tattered rags and a feeble muscu-
lature. And all unseen by you a host of heaven-sent
fatuities swathes him about, even, maybe, as they
swathe you about. Many men have never seen their
own profiles or the backs of their heads, and for the
back of your own mind no mirror has been invented.
They swathe him about so thickly that the pricks of
fate scarce penetrate to him, or become but a pleasant
titillation. And so, indeed, it is with all of us who
go on living. Self-deception is the anaesthetic of
life, while God is carving out our beings.

But to return from this general vivisection to Mr.
Hoopdriver's imaginings. You see now how external
our view has been ; we have had but the slightest
transitory glimpses of the drama within, of how the
things looked in the magic mirror of Mr. Hoop-
driver's mind. On the road to Guildford and during
his encounters with his haunting fellow-cyclists the

74 The Wheels of Chance

drama had presented chiefly the quiet gentleman to
whom we have alluded, but at Guildford, under more
varied stimuli, he burgeoned out more variously.
There was the house agent's window, for instance, set
him upon a charming little comedy. He would go in,
make inquires about that thirty-pound house, get the
key possibly and go over it — the thing would stimu-
late the clerk's curiosity immensely. He searched
his mind for a reason for this proceeding and dis-
covered that he was a dynamiter needing privacy.
Upon that theory he procured the key, explored the
house carefully, said darkly that it might suit his
special needs, but that there were others to consult.
The clerk, however, did not understand the allusion,
and merely pitied him as one who had married young
and paired himself to a stronger mind than his own.

This proceeding in some occult way led to the
purchase of a note-book and pencil, and that started
the conception of an artist taking notes. That was a
little game Mr. Hoopdriver had, in congenial com-
pany, played in his still younger days — to the infinite
annoyance of quite a number of respectable excur-
sionists at Hastings. In early days Mr. Hoopdriver
had been, as his mother proudly boasted, a 'bit of
a drawer,' but a conscientious and normally stupid
schoolmaster perceived the incipient talent and had
nipped it in the bud by a series of lessons in art.

The Wheels of Chance 75

However, our principal character figured about quite
happily in old corners of Guildford, and once the other
man in brown, looking out of the bay window of the
Earl of Kent, saw him standing in a corner by a
gateway, note-book in hand, busily sketching the Earl's
imposing features. At which sight the other man in
brown started back from the centre of the window,
so as to be hidden from him, and crouching slightly,
watched him intently through the interstices of the
lace curtains.

OMISSIONS
XI

Now the rest of the acts of Mr. Hoopdriver in
Guildford, on the great opening day of his holidays,
are not to be detailed here. How he wandered about
the old town in the dusk, and up to the Hogsback to
see the little lamps below and the little stars above
come out one after another ; how he returned through
the yellow-lit streets to the Yellow Hammer Coffee
Tavern and supped bravely in the commercial room
— a Man among Men; how he joined in the talk
about flying-machines and the possibilities of elec-
tricity, witnessing that flying-machines were "dead
certain to come," and that electricity was "wonder-
ful, wonderful " ; how he went and watched the billiard
playing and said, "Left 'em" several times with an
oracular air ; how he fell a-yawning ; and how he got
out his cycling map and studied it intently, — are
things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge
upon his going into the writing-room, and marking
the road from London to Guildford with a fine, bright
76

The Wheels of Chance 77

line of the reddest of red ink. In his little cyclist
hand-book there is a diary, and in the diary there is
an entry of these things — it is there to this day, and
I cannot do better than reproduce it here to witness
that this book is indeed a true one, and no lying
fable written to while away an hour.

At last he fell a-yawning so much that very reluc-
tantly indeed he set about finishing this great and
splendid day. (Alas! that all days must end at
last ! ) He got his candle in the hall from a friendly
waiting-maid, and passed upward — whither a modest
novelist, who writes for the family circle, dare not
follow. Yet I may tell you that he knelt down at
his bedside, happy and drowsy, and said, "Our
Father 'chartin' heaven," even as he had learnt it
by rote from his mother nearly twenty years ago.
And anon when his breathing had become deep
and regular, we may creep into his bedroom and
catch him at his dreams. He is lying upon his
left side, with his arm under the pillow. It is dark,
and he is hidden ; but if you could have seen his
face, sleeping there in the darkness, I think you
would have perceived, in spite of that treasured, thin,
and straggling moustache, in spite of your memory
of the coarse words he had used that day, that the
man before you was, after all, only a little child
asleep.

The Wheels of Chance

THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
XII

IN spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, you
have just seen Mr. Hoopdriver's face peaceful in its
beauty sleep in the little, plain bedroom at the very
top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern at Guild-
ford. That was before midnight. As the night
progressed he was disturbed by dreams.

After your first day of cycling one dream is inevi-
table. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of
your legs, and round and round they seem to go.
You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream
bicycles that change and grow ; you ride down
steeples and staircases and over precipices ; you hover
in horrible suspense over inhabited towns, vainly
seeking for a brake your hand cannot find, to save
you from a headlong fall ; you plunge into weltering
rivers, and rush helplessly at monstrous obstacles.
Anon Mr. Hoopdriver found himself riding out of
the darkness of non-existence, pedalling EzekiePs
Wheels across the Weald of Surrey, jolting over the
79

80 The Wheels of Chance

hills and smashing villages in his course, while the
other man in brown cursed and swore at him and
shouted to stop his career. There was the Putney
heath-keeper, too, and the man in drab raging at
him. He felt an awful fool, a — what was it? — a
juggins, ah! — a Juggernaut. The villages went off
one after another with a soft, squashing noise. He
did not see the Young Lady in Grey, but he knew she
was looking at his back. He dared not look round.
Where the devil was the brake ? It must have fallen
off. And the bell? Right in front of him was
Guildford. He tried to shout and warn the town to
get out of the way, but his voice was gone as well.
Nearer, nearer ! it was fearful ! and in another mo-
ment the houses were cracking like nuts and the
blood of the inhabitants squirting this way and that.
The streets were black with people running. Right
under his wheels he saw the Young Lady in Grey. A
feeling of horror came upon Mr. Hoopdriver; he
flung himself sideways to descend, forgetting how
high he was, and forthwith he began falling, falling,
falling.

He woke up, turned over, saw the new moon on
the window, wondered a little, and went to sleep
again.

This second dream went back into the first some-
how, and the other man in brown came threatening

The Wheels of Chance 81

and shouting towards him. He grew uglier and
uglier as he approached, and his expression was
intolerably evil. He came and looked close into
Mr. Hoopdriver's eyes and then receded to an
incredible distance. His face seemed to be lumi-
nous. " Miss Beaumont" he said, and splashed up
a spray of suspicion. Some one began letting off
fireworks, chiefly Catherine wheels, down the shop,
though Mr. Hoopdriver knew it was against the rules.
For it seemed that the place they were in was a vast
shop, and then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived that the
other man in brown was the shop-walker, differing
from most shop-walkers in the fact that he was lit
from within as a Chinese lantern might be. And the
customer Mr. Hoopdriver was going to serve was the
Young Lady in Grey. Curious he hadn't noticed it
before. She was in grey as usual, — rationals, — and
she had her bicycle leaning against the counter.
She smiled quite frankly at him, just as she had
done when she had apologised for stopping him.
And her form, as she leant towards him, was full of
a sinuous grace he had never noticed before. " What
can I have the pleasure?" said Mr. Hoopdriver at
once, and she said, "The Ripley road." So he got
out the Ripley road and unrolled it and showed it
to her, and she said that would do very nicely, and
kept on looking at him and smiling, and he began

82 The Wheels of Chance

measuring off eight miles by means of the yard
measure on the counter, eight miles being a dress
length, a rational dress length, that is; and then the
other man in brown came up and wanted to interfere,
and said Mr. Hoopdriver was a cad, besides measur-
ing it off too slowly. And as Mr. Hoopdriver began
to measure faster, the other man in brown said the
Young Lady in Grey had been there long enough, and
that he was her brother, or else she would not be
travelling with him, and he suddenly whipped his
arm about her waist and made off with her. It
occurred to Mr. Hoopdriver even at the moment that
this was scarcely brotherly behaviour. Of course it
wasn't! The sight of the other man gripping her so
familiarly enraged him frightfully; he leapt over the
counter forthwith and gave chase. They ran round
the shop and up an iron staircase into the Keep, and
so out upon the Ripley road. For some time they
kept dodging in and out of a wayside hotel with two
front doors and an inn yard. The other man could
not run very fast because he had hold of the Young
Lady in Grey, but Mr. Hoopdriver was hampered by
the absurd behaviour of his legs. They would not
stretch out; they would keep going round and round
as if they were on the treadles of a wheel, so that he
made the smallest steps conceivable. This dream
came to no crisis. The chase seemed to last an

The Wheels of Chance 83

interminable time, and all kinds of people, heath-
keepers, shopmen, policemen, the old man in the
Keep, the angry man in drab, the barmaid at the
Unicorn, men with flying-machines, people playing
billiards in the doorways, silly, headless figures,
stupid cocks and hens encumbered with parcels and
umbrellas and waterproofs, people carrying bedroom
candles, and such-like riffraff, kept getting in his
way and annoying him, although he sounded his
electric bell, and said, " Wonderful, wonderful ! " at
every corner. . . .

HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER WENT TO
HASLEMERE

XIII

THERE was some little delay in getting Mr. Hoop-
driver's breakfast, so that after all he was not free to
start out of Guildford until just upon the stroke of
nine. He wheeled his machine from the High Street
in some perplexity. He did not know whether this
young lady, who had seized hold of his imagination
so strongly, and her unfriendly and possibly menacing
brother, were ahead of him or even now breakfasting
somewhere in Guildford. In the former case he
might loiter as he chose ; in the latter he must hurry,
and possibly take refuge in branch roads.

It occurred to him as being in some obscure way
strategic, that he would leave Guildford not by the
obvious Portsmouth road, but by the road running
through Shalford. Along this pleasant shady way he
felt sufficiently secure to resume his exercises in rid-
ing with one hand off the handles, and in staring over
his shoulder. He came over once or twice, but fell
84

The Wheels of Chance 85

on his foot each time, and perceived that he was
improving. Before he got to Bramley a specious by-
way snapped him up, ran with him for half a mile or
more, and dropped him as a terrier drops a walking-
stick, upon the Portsmouth again, a couple of miles
from Godalming. He entered Godalming on his
feet, for the road through that delightful town is
beyond dispute the vilest in the world, a mere tumult
of road metal, a way of peaks and precipices, and,
after a successful experiment with cider at the Wool-
pack, he pushed on to Milford.

All this time he was acutely aware of the existence
of the Young Lady in Grey and her companion in
brown, as a child in the dark is of Bogies. Some-
times he could hear their pneumatics stealing upon
him from behind, and looking round saw a long stretch
of vacant road. Once he saw far ahead of him a glit-
tering wheel, but it proved to be a workingman riding
to destruction on a very tall ordinary. And he felt
a curious, vague uneasiness about that Young Lady in
Grey, for which he was altogether unable to account.
Now that he was awake he had forgotten that accent-
uated " Miss Beaumont " that had been quite clear in
his dream. But the curious dream conviction, that
the girl was not really the man's sister, would not let
itself be forgotten. Why, for instance, should a man
want to be alone with his sister on the top of a tower ?

The Wheels of Chance 87

At Milford his bicycle made, so to speak, an ass of
itself. A finger-post suddenly jumped out at him,
vainly indicating an abrupt turn to the right, and
Mr. Hoopdriver would have slowed up and read the
inscription, but no ! — the bicycle would not let him.
The road dropped a little into Milford, and the thing
shied, put down its head and bolted, and Mr. Hoop-
driver only thought of the brake when the finger-
post was passed. Then to have recovered the point
of intersection would have meant dismounting. For
as yet there was no road wide enough for Mr. Hoop-
driver to turn in. So he went on his way — or to be
precise, he did exactly the opposite thing. The road
to the right was the Portsmouth road, and this he was
on went to Haslemere and Midhurst. By that error
it came about that he once more came upon his
fellow-travellers of yesterday, coming on them sud-
denly, without the slightest preliminary announce-
ment and when they least expected it, under the
Southwestern Railway arch. " It's horrible," said
a girlish voice ; " it's brutal — cowardly — " And
stopped.

His expression, as he shot out from the archway
at them, may have been something between a grin of
recognition and a scowl of annoyance at himself for
the unintentional intrusion. But disconcerted as he
was, he was yet able to appreciate something of the

88 The Wheels of Chance

peculiarity of their mutual attitudes. The bicycles
were lying by the roadside, and the two riders stood
face to face. The other man in brown's attitude, as
it flashed upon Hoopdriver, was a deliberate pose ; he
twirled his moustache and smiled faintly, and he was
conscientiously looking amused. And the girl stood
rigid, her arms straight by her side, her handkerchief
clenched in her hand, and her face was flushed, with
the faintest touch of red upon her eyelids. She
seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver's sense to be indignant.
But that was the impression of a second. A mask of
surprised recognition fell across this revelation of
emotion as she turned her head towards him, and the
pose of the other man in brown vanished too in a
momentary astonishment. And then he had passed
them, and was riding on towards Haslemere to make
what he could of the swift picture that had photo-
graphed itself on his brain.

" Rum," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It's dashed rum ! "

"They were having a row."

" Smirking — " What he called the other man in
brown need not trouble us.

" Annoying her ! " That any human being should
do that !

" Why?"

The impulse to interfere leapt suddenly into Mr.
Hoopdriver's mind. He grasped his brake, de-

The Wheels of Chance 89

scended, and stood looking hesitatingly back. They
still stood by the railway bridge, and it seemed to
Mr. Hoopdriver's fancy that she was stamping her
foot. He hesitated, then turned his bicycle round,
mounted, and rode back towards them, gripping his
courage firmly lest it should slip away and leave him
ridiculous. " I'll offer 'im a screw 'ammer," said Mr.
Hoopdriver. Then, with a wave of fierce emotion,
he saw that the girl was crying. In another moment
they heard him and turned in surprise. Certainly
she had been crying ; her eyes were swimming in
tears, and the other man in brown looked exceed-
ingly disconcerted. Mr. Hoopdriver descended and
stood over his machine.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" he said, looking the
other man in brown squarely in the face. " No
accident?"

" Nothing," said the other man in brown shortly.
" Nothing at all, thanks."

"But," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a great effort,
"the young lady is crying. I thought perhaps — "

The Young Lady in Grey started, gave Hoopdriver
one swift glance, and covered one eye with her hand-
kerchief. "It's this speck," she said. "This speck
of dust in my eye."

"This lady," said the other man in brown, explain-
ing, " has a gnat in her eye."

90 The Wheels of Chance

There was a pause. The young lady busied herself
with her eye. " I believe it's out," she said. The other
man in brown made movements indicating commiserat-
ing curiosity concerning the alleged fly. Mr. Hoop-
driver — the word is his own — stood flabber-gastered.
He had all the intuition of the simple-minded. He
knew there was no fly. But the ground was suddenly
cut from his feet. There is a limit to knight-errantry
— dragons and false knights are all very well, but flies !
Fictitious flies ! Whatever the trouble was, it was evi-
dently not his affair. He felt he had made a fool of
himself again. He would have mumbled some sort
of apology; but the other man in brown gave him
no time, turned on him abruptly, even fiercely. " I
hope," he said, " that your curiosity is satisfied? "

" Certainly," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" Then we won't detain you."

And, ignominiously, Mr. Hoopdriver turned his
machine about, struggled upon it, and resumed the
road southward. And when he learnt that he was not
on the Portsmouth road, it was impossible to turn and
go back, for that would be to face his shame again,
and so he had to ride on by Brook Street up the hill
to Haslemere. And away to the right the Portsmouth
road mocked at him and made off to its fastnesses amid
the sunlit green and purple masses of Hindhead, where
Mr. Grant Allen writes his Hill Top Novels day by day.

The Wheels of Chance 91

The sun shone, and the wide blue hill views and
pleasant valleys one saw on either hand from the sand-
scarred roadway, even the sides of the road itself set
about with grey heather scrub and prickly masses of
gorse, and pine trees with their year's growth still
bright green, against the darkened needles of the
previous years, were fresh and delightful to Mr. Hoop-
driver's eyes. But the brightness of the day and the
day-old sense of freedom fought an uphill fight against
his intolerable vexation at that abominable encounter,
and had still to win it when he reached Haslemere.
A great brown shadow, a monstrous hatred of the
other man in brown, possessed him. He had con-
ceived the brilliant idea of abandoning Portsmouth, or
at least giving up the straight way to his fellow- wayfar-
ers, and of striking out boldly to the left, eastward.
He did not dare to stop at any of the inviting public-
houses in the main street of Haslemere, but turned up
a side way and found a little beer-shop, the Good Hope,
wherein to refresh himself. And there he ate and
gossipped condescendingly with an aged labourer, as-
suming the while for his own private enjoyment the
attributes of a Lost Heir, and afterwards mounted and
rode on towards Northchapel, a place which a number
of finger-posts conspired to boom, but which some
insidious turning prevented him from attaining.

HOW MR. HOOPDRIVER REACHED
MIDHURST

XIV

IT was one of my uncle's profoundest remarks that
human beings are the only unreasonable creatures.
This observation was so far justified by Mr. Hoop-
driver that, after spending the morning tortuously
avoiding the other man in brown and the Young
Lady in Grey, he spent a considerable part of the
afternoon in thinking about the Young Lady in Grey,
and contemplating in an optimistic spirit the possibili-
ties of seeing her again. Memory and imagination
played round her, so that his course was largely deter-
mined by the windings of the road he traversed. Of
one general proposition he was absolutely convinced.
" There's something Juicy wrong with 'em," said he —
once even aloud. But what it was he could not imag-
ine. He recapitulated the facts. " Miss Beaumont "
— brother and sister — and the stoppage to quarrel
and weep — it was perplexing material for a young
man of small experience. There was no exertion he
92

The Wheels of Chance 93

hated so much as inference, and after a time he gave
up any attempt to get at the realities of the case, and
let his imagination go free. Should he ever see her
again? Suppose he did — with that other chap not
about. The vision he found pleasantest was an en-
counter with her, an unexpected encounter at the
annual Dancing Class ' Do ' at the Putney Assembly
Rooms. Somehow they would drift together, and he
would dance with her again and again. It was a
pleasant vision, for you must understand that Mr.
Hoopdriver danced uncommonly well. Or again, in
the shop, a sudden radiance in the doorway, and
she is bowed towards the Manchester counter. And
then to lean over that counter and murmur, seemingly
apropos of the goods under discussion, "I have not
forgotten that morning on the Portsmouth road,"
and lower, "I never shall forget."

At Northchapel Mr. Hoopdriver consulted his map
and took counsel and weighed his course of action.
Petworth seemed a possible resting-place, or Pullbor-
ough ; Midhurst seemed too near, and any place over
the Downs beyond, too far, and so he meandered
towards Petworth, posing himself perpetually and
loitering, gathering wild flowers and wondering why
they had no names — for he had never heard of any
— dropping them furtively at the sight of a stranger,
and generally ' mucking about.' There were purple

94

The Wheels of Chance 95

vetches in the hedges, meadowsweet, honeysuckle,
belated brambles — but the dog-roses had already
gone ; there were green and red blackberries, stella-
rias, and dandelions, and in another place white dead
nettles, traveller's-joy, clinging bedstraw, grasses
flowering, white campions, and ragged robins. One
cornfield was glorious with poppies, bright scarlet and
purple white, and the blue corn-flowers were begin-
ning. In the lanes the trees met overhead, and the
wisps of hay still hung to the straggling hedges. In
one of the main roads he steered a perilous passage
through a dozen surly dun oxen. Here and there
were little cottages, and picturesque beer-houses with
the vivid brewers' boards of blue and scarlet, and once
a broad green and a church, and an expanse of some
hundred houses or so. Then he came to a pebbly
rivulet that emerged between clumps of sedge loose-
strife and forget-me-nots under an arch of trees, and
rippled across the road, and there he dismounted,
longing to take off shoes and stockings — those stylish
chequered stockings were now all dimmed with dust
— and paddle his lean legs in the chuckling cheerful
water. But instead he sat in a manly attitude, smok-
ing a cigarette, for fear lest the Young Lady in Grey
should come glittering round the corner. For the
flavour of the Young Lady in Grey was present
through it all, mixing with the flowers and all the

96 The Wheels of Chance

delight of it, a touch that made this second day quite
different from the first, an undertone of expectation,
anxiety, and something like regret that would not be
ignored.

It was only late in the long evening that, quite
abruptly, he began to repent, vividly and decidedly,
having fled these two people. He was getting hun-
gry, and that has a curious effect upon the emotional
colouring of our minds. The man was a sinister
brute, Hoopdriver saw in a flash of inspiration, and
the girl — she was in some serious trouble. And he
who might have helped her had taken his first impulse
as decisive — and bolted. This new view of it de-
pressed him dreadfully. What might not be happen-
ing to her now? He thought again of her tears.
Surely it was merely his duty, seeing the trouble
afoot, to keep his eye upon it.

He began riding fast to get quit of such self-re-
proaches. He found himself in a tortuous tangle of
roads, and as the dusk was coming on, emerged, not
at Petworth but at Easebourne, a mile from Mid-
hurst. "I'm getting hungry," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
inquiring of a gamekeeper in Easebourne village.
" Midhurst a mile, and Petworth five ! — Thenks,
I'll take Midhurst."

He came into Midhurst by the bridge at the water-
mill, and up the North Street, and a little shop flour-

The Wheels of Chance 97

ishing cheerfully, the cheerful sign of a teapot, and
exhibiting a brilliant array of tobaccos, sweets, and
children's toys in the window, struck his fancy. A
neat, bright-eyed little old lady made him welcome,
and he was presently supping sumptuously on sausages
and tea, with a visitors' book full of the most humor-
ous and flattering remarks about the little old lady,
in verse and prose, propped up against his teapot
as he ate. Regular good some of the jokes were, and
rhymes that read well — even with your mouth full of
sausage. Mr. Hoopdriver formed a vague idea of
drawing "something" — for his judgment on the
little old lady was already formed. He pictured the
little old lady discovering it afterwards — " My gra-
cious ! One of them Punch men," she would say.
The room had a curtained recess and a chest of
drawers, for presently it was to be his bedroom, and
the day part of it was decorated with framed Odd-
fellows' certificates and gilt-backed books and por-
traits, and kettle -holders, and all kinds of beautiful
things made out of wool ; very comfortable it was
indeed. The window was lead framed and diamond
paned, and through it one saw the corner of the
vicarage and a pleasant hill crest, in dusky silhouette
against the twilight sky. And after the sausages had
ceased to be, he lit a Red Herring cigarette and went
swaggering out into the twilight street. All shadowy

98 The Wheels of Chance

blue between its dark brick houses, was the street,
with a bright yellow window here and there and
splashes of green and red where the chemist's illumi-
nation fell across the road.

AN INTERLUDE
XV

AND now let us for a space leave Mr. Hoopdriver
in the dusky Midhurst North Street, and return to
the two folks beside the railway bridge between
Milford and Haslemere. She was a gir-1 of eighteen,
dark, fine featured, with bright eyes, and a rich,
swift colour under her warm-tinted skin. Her eyes
were all the brighter for the tears that swam in them.
The man was thirty three or four, fair, with a longish
nose overhanging his sandy flaxen moustache, pale
blue eyes, and a head that struck out above and
behind. He stood with his feet wide apart, his hand
on his hip, in an attitude that was equally suggestive
of defiance and aggression. They had watched
Hoopdriver out of sight. The unexpected interrup-
tion had stopped the flood of her tears. He tugged
his abundant moustache and regarded her calmly.
She stood with face averted, obstinately resolved not
to speak first. "Your behaviour," he said at last,
"makes you conspicuous."
99

ioo The Wheels of Chance

She turned upon him, her eyes and cheeks glowing,
her hands clenched. "You unspeakable cad" she
said, and choked, stamped her little foot, and stood
panting.

"Unspeakable cad! My dear girl! Possible I
am an unspeakable cad. Who wouldn't be — for
you?"

"'Dear girl!' How dare you speak to me like
that? You — "

" I would do anything — "

"Oh!"

There was a moment's pause. She looked squarely
into his face, her eyes alight with anger and con-
tempt, and perhaps he flushed a little. He stroked
his moustache, and by an effort maintained his
cynical calm. "Let us be reasonable," he said.

" Reasonable ! That means all that is mean and
cowardly and sensual in the world."

"You have always had it so — in your generalising
way. But let us look at the facts of the case — if
that pleases you better."

With an impatient gesture she motioned him to
go on.

"Well," he said, — "you've eloped."

"I've left my home," she corrected, with dignity.
" I left my home because it was unendurable. Be-
cause that woman — "

The Wheels of Chance 101

"Yes, yes. But the point is, you have eloped
with me."

"You came with me. You pretended to be my
friend. Promised to help me to earn a living by
writing. It was you who said, why shouldn't a man
and woman be friends? And now you dare — you
dare — "

"Really, Jessie, this pose of yours, this injured
innocence — "

"I will go back. I forbid you — I forbid you to
stand in the way — "

"One moment. I have always thought that my
little pupil was at least clear-headed. You don't
know everything yet, you know. Listen to me for a
moment."

"Haven't I been listening? And you have only
insulted me. You who dared only to talk of friend-
ship, who scarcely dared hint at anything beyond."

" But you took the hints, nevertheless. You knew.
You knew. And you did not mind. Mind! You
liked it. It was the fun of the whole thing for you.
That I loved you, and could not speak to you. You
played with it — "

"You have said all that before. Do you think
that justifies you?"

"That isn't all. I made up my mind — Well,
to make the game more even. And so I suggested

IO2 The Wheels of Chance

to you and joined with you in this expedition of
yours, invented a sister at Midhurst — I tell you,
I haven't a sister ! For one object — "

"Well?"

"To compromise you."

She started. That was a new way of putting it.
For half a minute neither spoke. Then she began
half defiantly: "Much I am compromised. Of
course — I have made a fool of myself — "

" My dear girl, you are still on the sunny side of
eighteen, and you know very little of this world.
Less than you think. But you will learn. Before
you write all those novels we have talked about, you
will have to learn. And that's one point — " He
hesitated. "You started and blushed when the man
at breakfast called you Ma'am. You thought it a
funny mistake, but you did not say anything because
he was young and nervous — and besides, the thought
of being my wife offended your modesty. You didn't
care to notice it. But — you see; I gave your name
as Mrs. Beaumont." He looked almost apologetic,
in spite of his cynical pose. " Mrs. Beaumont," he
repeated, pulling his flaxen moustache and watching
the effect.

She looked into his eyes speechless. " I am learn-
ing fast," she said slowly, at last.

He thought the time had come for an emotional

The Wheels of Chance 103

attack. "Jessie," he said, with a sudden change of
voice, " I know all this is mean, is villanous. But
do you think that I have done all this scheming, all
this subterfuge, for any other object — "

She did not seem to listen to his words. " I shall
ride home," she said abruptly.

"To her?"

She winced.

"Just think," said he, "what she could say to you
after this."

"Anyhow, I shall leave you now."

"Yes? And go — "

"Go somewhere to earn my living, to be a free
woman, to live without conventionality — "

"My dear girl, do let us be cynical. You haven't
money and you haven't credit. No one would take
you in. It's one of two things: go back to your
stepmother, or — trust to me."

"How fan I?"

"Then you must go back to her." He paused
momentarily, to let this consideration have its proper
weight. "Jessie, I did not mean to say the things I
did. Upon my honour, I lost my head when I spoke
so. If you will, forgive me. I am a man. I could
not help myself. Forgive me, and I promise you — "

" How can I trust you? "

" Try me. I can assure you — "

IO4 The Wheels of Chance

She regarded him distrustfully.

"At any rate, ride on with me now. Surely we
have been in the shadow of this horrible bridge long
enough."

"Oh! let me think," she said, half turning from
him and pressing her hand to her brow.

"Think! Look here, Jessie. It is ten o'clock.
Shall we call a truce until one?"

She hesitated, demanded a definition of the truce,
and at last agreed.

They mounted, and rode on in silence, through
the sunlight and the heather. Both were extremely
uncomfortable and disappointed. She was pale,
divided between fear and anger. She perceived she
was in a scrape, and tried in vain to think of a way
of escape. Only one tangible thing would keep in
her mind, try as she would to ignore it. That was
the quite irrelevant fact that his head was singularly
like an albino cocoanut. He, too, felt thwarted.
He felt that this romantic business of seduction was,
after all, unexpectedly tame. But this was only the
beginning. At any rate, every day she spent with
him was a day gained. Perhaps things looked worse
than they were; that was some consolation.

OF THE ARTIFICIAL IN MAN, AND OF
THE ZEITGEIST

XVI

You have seen these two young people — Bechamel,
by-the-bye, is the man's name, and the girl's is Jessie
Milton — from the outside ; you have heard them
talking ; they ride now side by side (but not too close
together, and in an uneasy silence) towards Hasle-
mere; and this chapter will concern itself with those
curious little council chambers inside their skulls,
where their motives are in session and their acts are
considered and passed.

But first a word concerning wigs and false teethA
Some jester, enlarging upon the increase of bald
heads and purblind people, has deduced a wonderful
future for the children of men. Man, he said, was.
nowadays a hairless creature by forty or fifty, and
for hair we gave him a wig; shrivelled, and we
padded him; toothless, and lo! false teeth set in
gold. Did he lose a limb, and a fine, new, artificial
one was at his disposal; get indigestion, and to hand
105

io6 The Wheels of Chance

was artificial digestive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as
the case might be. Complexions, too, were replace-
able, spectacles superseded an inefficient eye-lens,
and imperceptible false diaphragms were thrust into
the failing ear. So he went over our anatomies,
until, at last, he had conjured up a weird thing of
shreds and patches, a simulacrum, an artificial body
of a man, with but a doubtful germ of living flesh
lurking somewhere in his recesses.^ To that, he
held, we were coming.

How far such odd substitution for the body is
possible need not concern us now. But the devil,
speaking by the lips of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, hath
it that in the case of one Tomlinson, the thing, so
far as the soul is concerned, has already been accom-
plished. Time was when men had simple souls,
desires as natural as their eyes, a little reasonable
philanthropy, a little reasonable philoprogenitive-
ness, hunger, and a taste for good living, a decent,
personal vanity, a healthy, satisfying pugnacity, and
so forth. But now we are taught and disciplined for
years and years, and thereafter we read and read for
all the time some strenuous, nerve-destroying busi-
ness permits. Pedagogic hypnotists, pulpit and
platform hypnotists, book-writing hypnotists, news-
paper-writing hypnotists, are at us all. ^This sugar
you are eating, they tell us, is ink, and forthwith we

The Wheels of Chance 107

reject it with infinite disgust. This black draught
of unrequited toil is True Happiness, and down it
goes with every symptom of pleasure. This Ibsen,
they say, is dull past believing, and we yawn and
stretch beyond endurance. Pardon ! they interrupt,
but this Ibsen is deep and delightful, and we vie
with one another in an excess of entertainment.^
And when we open the heads of these two young
people, we find, not a straightforward motive on the
surface anywhere; we find, indeed, not a soul so
much as an oversoul, a Zeitgeist, a congestion of
acquired ideas, a highway's feast of fine, confused
thinking. The girl is resolute to Live Her Own Life,
a phrase you may have heard before, and the man
has a pretty perverted ambition to be a cynical ar-
tistic person of the very calmest description. He is
hoping for the awakening of Passion in her, among
other things. He knows Passion ought to awaken,
from the text-books he has studied. He knows she
admires his genius, but he is unaware that she does
not admire his head. He is quite a distinguished
art critic in London, and he met her at that cele-
brated lady novelist's, her stepmother, and here you
have them well embarked upon the Adventure. Both
are in the first stage of repentance, which consists,
as you have probably found for yourself, in setting
your teeth hard and saying, "I will go on."

io8 The Wheels of Chance

Things, you see, have jarred a little, and they ride
on their way together with a certain aloofness of
manner that promises ill for the orthodox develop-
ment of the Adventure. He perceives he was too
precipitate. But he feels his honour is involved,
and meditates the development of a new attack.
And the girl? She is unawakened. Her motives
are bookish, written by a haphazard syndicate of
authors, novelists, and biographers, on her white in-
experience. An artificial oversoul she is, that may
presently break down and reveal a human being
beneath it. She is still in that schoolgirl phase when
a talkative old man is more interesting than a tongue-
tied young one, and when to be an eminent mathe-
matician, say, or to edit a daily paper, seems as fine
an ambition as any girl need aspire to. Bechamel
was to have helped her to attain that in the most
expeditious manner, and here he is beside her, talking
enigmatical phrases about passion, looking at her with
the oddest expression, and once, and that was his
gravest offence, offering to kiss her. At any rate he
has apologised. She still scarcely realises, you see,
the scrape she has got into.

THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST
XVII

WE left Mr. Hoopdriver at the door of the little
tea, toy, and tobacco shop. You must not think that
a strain is put on coincidence when I tell you that
next door to Mrs. Wardor's — that was the name of
the bright-eyed, little old lady with whom Mr. Hoop-
driver had stopped — is the Angel Hotel, and in the
Angel Hotel, on the night that Mr. Hoopdriver
reached Midhurst, were 'Mr.' and 'Miss' Beau-
mont, our Bechamel and Jessie Milton. Indeed,
it was a highly probable thing; for if one goes
through Guildford, the choice of southward roads is
limited; you may go by Petersfield to Portsmouth,
or by Midhurst to Chichester, in addition to which
highways there is nothing for it but minor roadways
to Petworth or Pulborough, and cross-cuts Brighton-
ward. And coming to Midhurst from the north, the
Angel's entrance lies yawning to engulf your highly
respectable cyclists, while Mrs. Wardor's genial tea-
pot is equally attractive to those who weigh their
109

no The Wheels of Chance

means in little scales. But to people unfamiliar
with the Sussex roads — and such were the three per-
sons of this story — the convergence did not appear
to be so inevitable.

Bechamel, tightening his chain in the Angel yard
after dinner, was the first to be aware of their
reunion. He saw Hoopdriver walk slowly across
the gateway, his head enhaloed in cigarette smoke,
and pass out of sight up the street. Incontinently
a mass of cloudy uneasiness, that had been partly
dispelled during the day, reappeared and concen-
trated rapidly into definite suspicion. He put his
screw hammer into his pocket and walked through
the archway into the street, to settle the business
forthwith, for he prided himself on his decision.
Hoopdriver was merely promenading, and they met
face to face.

At the sight of his adversary, something between
disgust and laughter seized Mr. Hoopdriver and for
a moment destroyed his animosity. "'Ere we are
again ! " he said, laughing insincerely in a sudden
outbreak at the perversity of chance.

The other man in brown stopped short in Mr.
Hoopdriver' s way, staring. Then his face assumed
an expression of dangerous civility. "Is it any
information to you," he said, with immense polite-
ness, "when I remark that you are following us?"

The Wheels of Chance in

Mr. Hoopdriver, for some occult reason, resisted
his characteristic impulse to apologise. He wanted
to annoy the other man in brown, and a sentence
that had come into his head in a previous rehearsal
cropped up appropriately. "Since when," said Mr.
Hoopdriver, catching his breath, yet bringing the
question out valiantly, nevertheless, — " since when
'ave you purchased the county of Sussex?"

"May I point out," said the other man in brown,
"that I object — we object not only to your prox-
imity to us. To be frank — you appear to be follow-
ing us — with an object."

"You can always," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "turn
round if you don't like it, and go back the way you
came."

"Oh-o ! " said the other man in brown. " That's
it! I thought as much."

"Did you?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite at sea,
but rising pluckily to the unknown occasion. What
was the man driving at?

"I see," said the other man. "I see. I half
suspected — " His manner changed abruptly to a
quality suspiciously friendly. "Yes — a word with
you. You will, I hope, give me ten minutes."

Wonderful things were dawning on Mr. Hoop-
driver. What did the other man take him for?
Here at last was reality! He hesitated. Then he

H2 The Wheels of Chance

thought of an admirable phrase. "You 'ave some
communication — "

" We'll call it a communication," said the other man.

"I can spare you the ten minutes," said Mr.
Hoopdriver, with dignity.

"This way, then," said the other man in brown, and
they walked slowly down the North Street towards
the Grammar School. There was, perhaps, thirty
seconds' silence. The other man stroked his mous-
tache nervously. Mr. Hoopdriver' s dramatic in-
stincts were now fully awake. He did not quite
understand in what rdle he was cast, but it was
evidently something dark and mysterious. Doctor
Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas
were well within Mr. Hoopdriver 's range of reading,
and he had not read them for nothing.

"I will be perfectly frank with you," said the
other man in brown.

"Frankness is always the best course," said Mr.
Hoopdriver.

" Well, then — who the devil set you on this busi-
ness?"

"Set me on this business? "

"Don't pretend to be stupid. Who's your
employer? Who engaged you for this job? "

"Well, "said Mr. Hoopdriver, confused. "No —
I can't say."

The Wheels of Chance 113

"Quite sure? " The other man in brown glanced
meaningly down at his hand, and Mr. Hoopdriver,
following him mechanically, saw a yellow milled
edge glittering in the twilight. Now your shop
assistant is just above the tip-receiving class, and
only just above it — so that he is acutely sensitive
on the point.

Mr. Hoopdriver flushed hotly, and his eyes were
angry as he met those of the other man in brown.
" Stow it ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, stopping and facing
the tempter.

"What! " said the other man in brown, surprised.
" Eigh? " And so saying he stowed it in his breeches
pocket.

"D'yer think I'm to be bribed?" said Mr. Hoop-
driver, whose imagination was rapidly expanding
the situation. "By Gosh! I'd follow you now — "

"My dear sir," said the other man in brown, "I
beg your pardon. I misunderstood you. I really
beg your pardon. Let us walk on. In your pro-
fession— "

"What have you got to say against my profes-
sion?"

" Well, really, you know. There are detectives of
an inferior description — watchers. The whole class.
Private Inquiry — I did not realise — I really trust
you will overlook what was, after all — you must

The Wheels of Chance 115

admit — a natural indiscretion. Men of honour are
not so common in the world — in any profession."

It was lucky for Mr. Hoopdriver that in Midhurst
they do not light the lamps in the summer time, or
the one they were passing had betrayed him. As it
was, he had to snatch suddenly at his moustache and
tug fiercely at it, to conceal the furious tumult of
exultation, the passion of laughter, that came boiling
up. Detective ! Even in the shadow Bechamel saw
that a laugh was stifled, but he put it down to the
fact that the phrase "men of honour" amused his
interlocutor. " He ' 11 come round yet, "said Bechamel
to himself. "He's simply holding out for a fiver."
He coughed.

"I don't see that it hurts you to tell me who your
employer is."

"Don't you? I do."

" Prompt, " said Bechamel, appreciatively. " Now
here's the thing I want to put to you — the kernel of
the whole business. You need not answer if you
don't want to. There's no harm done in my telling
you what I want to know. Are you employed to
watch me — or Miss Milton ? "

"I'm not the leaky sort," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
keeping the secret he did not know with immense
enjoyment. Miss Milton ! That was her name.
Perhaps he'd tell some more. " It's no good

u6 The Wheels of Chance

pumping. Is that all you're after?" said Mr.
Hoopdriver.

Bechamel respected himself for his diplomatic
gifts. He tried to catch a remark by throwing out
a confidence. " I take it there are two people con-
cerned in watching this affair."

"Who's the other? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, calmly,
but controlling with enormous internal tension his
self-appreciation. "Who's the other?" was really
brilliant, he thought.

"There's my wife and her stepmother."

"And you want to know which it is? "

"Yes," said Bechamel.

"Well — arst 'em!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, his
exultation getting the better of him, and with a
pretty consciousness of repartee. "Arst 'em both."

Bechamel turned impatiently. Then he made a
last effort. "I'd give a five-pound note to know
just the precise state of affairs," he said.

"I told you to stow that," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
in a threatening tone. And added with perfect truth
and a magnificent mystery, "You don't quite under-
stand who you're dealing with. But you will ! "
He spoke with such conviction that he half believed
that that detective office of his in London — Baker
Street, in fact — really existed.

With that the interview terminated. Bechamel

The Wheels of Chance 117

went back to the Angel, perturbed. " Hang detec-
tives!" It wasn't the kind of thing he had antici-
pated at all. Hoopdriver, with round eyes and a
wondering smile, walked down to where the mill
waters glittered in the moonlight, and after medi-
tating over the parapet of the bridge for a space,
with occasional murmurs of, "Private Inquiry" and
the like, returned, with mystery even in his paces,
towards the town.

XVIII

THAT glee which finds expression in raised eye-
brows and long, low whistling noises was upon Mr.
Hoopdriver. For a space he forgot the tears of the
Young Lady in Grey. Here was a new game ! — and
a real one. Mr. Hoopdriver as a Private Inquiry
Agent, a Sherlock Holmes in fact, keeping these two
people 'under observation.' He walked slowly back
from the bridge until he was opposite the Angel, and
stood for ten minutes, perhaps, contemplating that
establishment and enjoying all the strange sensations
of being this wonderful, this mysterious and terrible
thing. Everything fell into place in his scheme. He
had, of course, by a kind of instinct, assumed the
disguise of a cyclist, picked up the first old crock he
came across as a means of pursuit. ' No expense was
to be spared.'

Then he tried to understand what it was in particu-
lar that he was observing. " My wife " — " Her step-
mother ! " Then he remembered her swimming eyes.
Abruptly came a wave of anger that surprised him,
washed away the detective superstructure, and left
him plain Mr. Hoopdriver. This man in brown, with

The Wheels of Chance 119

his confident manner, and his proffered half sovereign
(damn him !) was up to no good, else why should he
object to being watched? He was married ! She
was not his sister. He began to understand. A hor-
rible suspicion of the state of affairs came into Mr.
Hoopdriver's head. Surely it had not come to that.
He was a detective ! — he would find out. How
was it to be done? He began to submit sketches on
approval to himself. It required an effort before he
could walk into the Angel bar. "A lemonade and
bitter, please," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

He cleared his throat. "Are Mr. and Mrs. Bow-
long stopping here?"

" What, a gentleman and • a young lady — on
bicycles? "

" Fairly young — a married couple."

"No," said the barmaid, a talkative person of
ample dimensions. "There's no married couples
stopping here. But there's a Mr. and Miss Beau-
mont" She spelt it for precision. "Sure you've got
the name right, young man? "

" Quite," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" Beaumont there is, but no one of the name of —
What was the name you gave ? "

"Bowlong," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"No, there ain't no Bowlong," said the barmaid,
taking up a glasscloth and a drying tumbler and

120 The Wheels of Chance

beginning to polish the latter. " First off, I thought
you might be asking for Beaumont — the names being
similar. Were you expecting them on bicycles ? "

"Yes — they said they might be in Midhurst
to-night."

" P'raps they'll come presently. Beaumont's here,
but no Bowlong. Sure that Beaumont ain't the
name? "

" Certain," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" It's curious the names being so alike. I thought
p'raps — "

And so they conversed at some length, Mr. Hoop-
driver delighted to find his horrible suspicion dis-
posed of. The barmaid having listened awhile at
the staircase volunteered some particulars of the
young couple upstairs. Her modesty was much
impressed by the young lady's costume, so she in-
timated, and Mr. Hoopdriver whispered the badinage
natural to the occasion, at which she was coquettishly
shocked. " There'll be no knowing which is which,
in a year or two," said the barmaid. "And her
manner too ! She got off her machine and give it
'im to stick up against the kerb, and in she marched.
' I and my brother,' says she, ' want to stop here
to-night. My brother doesn't mind what kind of
room 'e 'as, but I want a room with a good view, if
there's one to be got,' says she. He comes hurrying

121

122 The Wheels of Chance

in after and looks at her. ' I've settled the rooms,'
she says, and 'e says ' damn ! ' just like that. I can
fancy my brother letting me boss the show like that."

" I dessay you do," said Mr. Hoopdriver, " if the
truth was known."

The barmaid looked down, smiled and shook her
head, put down the tumbler, polished, and took up
another that had been draining, and shook the drops
of water into her little zinc sink.

" She'll be a nice little lot to marry," said the bar-
maid. "She'll be wearing the — well, b-dashes, as
the sayin' is. I can't think what girls is comin' to."

This depreciation of the Young Lady in Grey was
hardly to Hoopdriver's taste.

" Fashion," said he, taking up his change. " Fashion
is all the go with you ladies — and always was. You'll
be wearing 'em yourself before a couple of years is out."

" Nice they'd look on my rigger," said the barmaid,
with a titter. "No — I ain't one of your fashionable
sort. Gracious no ! I shouldn't feel as if I'd any-
thing on me, not more than if I'd forgot — Well,
there ! I'm talking." She put down the glass
abruptly. "I dessay I'm old fashioned," she said,
and walked humming down the bar.

"Not you," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He waited
until he caught her eye, then with his native courtesy
smiled, raised his cap, and wished her good evening.

XIX

THEN Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room
with the lead-framed windows where he had dined,
and where the bed was now comfortably made, sat
down on the box under the window, stared at the
moon rising on the shining vicarage roof, and tried
to collect his thoughts. How they whirled at first !
It was past ten, and most of Midhurst was tucked
away in bed, some one up the street was learning the
violin, at rare intervals a belated inhabitant hurried
home and woke the echoes, and a corncrake kept up
a busy churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was
deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along the
black edge of the hill, and the white moon overhead,
save for a couple of yellow stars, had the sky to her-
self.

At first his thoughts were kinetic, of deeds and not
relationships. There was this malefactor, and his vic-
tim, and it had fallen on Mr. Hoopdriver to take a hand
in the game. He was married. Did she know he was
married? Never for a moment did a thought of evil
concerning her cross Hoopdriver's mind. Simple-
123

124 The Wheels of Chance

minded people see questions of morals so much better
than superior persons — who have read and thought
themselves complex to impotence. He had heard her
voice, seen the frank light in her eyes, and she had
been weeping — that sufficed. The rights of the case
he hadn't properly grasped. But he would. And that
smirking — well, swine was the mildest for him. He
recalled the exceedingly unpleasant incident of the
railway bridge. " Thin we won't detain yer, thenks,"
said Mr. Hoopdriver, aloud, in a strange, unnatural,
contemptible voice, supposed to represent that of
Bechamel. " Oh, the beggar ! I'll be level with him
yet. He's afraid of us detectives — that I'll swear."
(If Mrs. Wardor should chance to be on the other
side of the door within earshot, well and good.)

For a space he meditated chastisements and re-
venges, physical impossibilities for the most part, —
Bechamel staggering headlong from the impact of
Mr. Hoopdriver's large, but, to tell the truth, ill sup-
ported fist, Bechamel's five feet nine of height lifted
from the ground and quivering under a vigorously
applied horsewhip. So pleasant was such dreaming,
that Mr. Hoopdriver's peaked face under the moon-
light was transfigured. One might have paired him
with that well-known and universally admired triumph,
'The Soul's Awakening,' so sweet was his ecstasy.
And presently with his thirst for revenge glutted by

, The Wheels of Chance 125

six or seven violent assaults, a duel and two vigorous
murders, his mind came round to the Young Lady in
Grey again.

She was a plucky one too. He went over the inci-
dent the barmaid at the Angel had described to him.
His thoughts ceased to be a torrent, smoothed down
to a mirror in which she was reflected with infinite
clearness and detail. He'd never met anything like
her before. Fancy that bolster of a barmaid being
dressed in that way ! He whuffed a contemptuous
laugh. He compared her colour, her vigour, her voice,
with the Young Ladies in Business with whom his lot
had been cast. Even in tears she was beautiful, more
beautiful indeed to him, for it made her seem softer
and weaker, more accessible. And such weeping as
he had seen before had been so much a matter of
damp white faces, red noses, and hair coming out of
curl. Your draper's assistant becomes something of a
judge of weeping, because weeping is the custom of all
Young Ladies in Business, when for any reason their ser-
vices are dispensed with. She could weep — and (by
Gosh !) she could smile. He knew that, and reverting
to acting abruptly, he smiled confidentially at the
puckered pallor of the moon.

It is difficult to say how long Mr. Hoopdriver's pen-
siveness lasted. It seemed a long time before his
thoughts of action returned. Then he remembered he

126 The Wheels of Chance

was a ' watcher ' ; that to-morrow he must be busy. It
would be in character to make notes, and he pulled
out his little note-book. With that in hand he fell
a-thinking again. Would that chap tell her the 'tecks
were after them? If so, would she be as anxious to
get away as he was? He must be on the alert. If
possible he must speak to her. Just a significant
word, "Your friend — trust me!" — It occurred to
him that to-morrow these fugitives might rise early to
escape. At that he thought of the time and found it
was half-past eleven. " Lord ! " said he, " I must see
that I wake." He yawned and rose. The blind was
up, and he pulled back the little chintz curtains to let
the sunlight strike across to the bed, hung his watch
within good view of his pillow, on a nail that supported
a kettle-holder, and sat down on his bed to undress.
He lay awake for a little while thinking of the won-
derful possibilities of the morrow, and thence he
passed gloriously into the wonderland of dreams.

THE PURSUIT
XX

AND now to tell of Mr. Hoopdriver, rising with the
sun, vigilant, active, wonderful, the practicable half of
the lead-framed window stuck open, ears alert, an eye
flickering incessantly in the corner panes, in oblique
glances at the Angel front. Mrs. Warder wanted him
to have his breakfast downstairs in her kitchen, but
that would have meant abandoning the watch, and he
held out strongly. The bicycle, cap-a-pie, occupied,
under protest, a strategic position in the shop. He
was expectant by six in the morning. By nine hor-
rible fears oppressed him that his quest had escaped
him, and he had to reconnoitre the Angel yard in
order to satisfy himself. There he found the ostler
(How are the mighty fallen in these decadent days !)
brushing down the bicycles of the chase, and he re-
turned relieved to Mrs. Warder's premises. And
about ten they emerged, and rode quietly up the
North Street. He watched them until they turned
the corner of the post office, and then out into the
127

128

The Wheels of Chance 129

road and up after them in fine style ! They went by
the engine-house where the old stocks and the whip-
ping posts are, and on to the Chichester road, and
he followed gallantly. So this great chase began.

They did not look round, and he kept them just
within sight, getting down if he chanced to draw
closely upon them round a corner. By riding vigor-
ously he kept quite conveniently near them, for they
made but little hurry. He grew hot indeed, and his
knees were a little stiff to begin with, but that was
all. There was little danger of losing them, for a
thin chalky dust lay upon the road, and the track of
her tire was milled like a shilling, and his was a
chequered ribbon along the way. So they rode by
Cobden's monument and through the prettiest of vil-
lages, until at last the downs rose steeply ahead. There
they stopped awhile at the only inn in the place, and
Mr. Hoopdriver took up a position which commanded
the inn door, and mopped his face and thirsted and
smoked a Red Herring cigarette. They remained in
the inn for some time. A number of chubby inno-
cents returning home from school, stopped and
formed a line in front of him, and watched him
quietly but firmly for the space of ten minutes or so.
"Go away," said he, and they only seemed quietly
interested. He asked them all their names then, and
they answered indistinct murmurs. He gave it up at

130 The Wheels of Chance

last and became passive on his gate, and so at length
they tired of him.

The couple under observation occupied the inn so
long that Mr. Hoopdriver at the thought of their pos-
sible employment hungered as well as thirsted. Clearly,
they were lunching. It was a cloudless day, and the
sun at the meridian beat down upon the top of Mr.
Hoopdriver's head, a shower bath of sunshine, a huge
jet of hot light. It made his head swim. At last
they emerged, and the other man in brown looked
back and saw him. They rode on to the foot of the
down, and dismounting began to push tediously up
that long nearly vertical ascent of blinding white road,
Mr. Hoopdriver hesitated. It might take them
twenty minutes to mount that. Beyond was empty
downland perhaps for miles. He decided to return
to the inn and snatch a hasty meal.

At the inn they gave him biscuits and cheese and a
misleading pewter measure of sturdy ale, pleasant
under the palate, cool in the throat, but leaden in the
legs, of a hot afternoon. He felt a man of substance
as he emerged in the blinding sunshine, but even by
the foot of the down the sun was insisting again that
his skull was too small for his brains. The hill had
gone steeper, the chalky road blazed like a magne-
sium light, and his front wheel began an apparently
incurable squeaking. He felt as a man from Mars

The Wheels of Chance 131

would feel if he were suddenly transferred to this
planet, about three times as heavy as he was wont to
feel. The two little black figures had vanished over
the forehead of the hill. "The tracks'll be all
right," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

That was a comforting reflection. It not only jus-
tified a slow progress up the hill, but at the crest a
sprawl on the turf beside the road, to contemplate the
Weald from the south. In a matter of two days he
had crossed that spacious valley, with its frozen surge
of green hills, its little villages and townships here and
there, its copses and cornfields, its ponds and streams
like jewelery of diamonds and silver glittering in the
sun. The North Downs were hidden, far away be-
yond the Wealden Heights. Down below was the
little village of Cocking, and half-way up the hill, a mile
perhaps to the right, hung a flock of sheep grazing
together. Overhead an anxious peewit circled against
the blue, and every now and then emitted its feeble
cry. Up here the heat was tempered by a pleasant
breeze. Mr. Hoopdriver was possessed by unreason-
able contentment; he lit himself a cigarette and
lounged more comfortably. Surely the Sussex ale is
made of the waters of Lethe, of poppies and pleasant
dreams. Drowsiness coiled insidiously about him.

He awoke with a guilty start, to find himself sprawl-
ing prone on the turf with his cap over one eye. He

132

The Wheels of Chance 133

sat up, rubbed his eyes, and realised that he had
slept. His head was still a trifle heavy. And the
chase? He jumped to his feet and stooped to pick
up his overturned machine. He whipped out his
watch and saw that it was past two o'clock. " Lord
love us, fancy that ! — But the tracks '11 be all right,"
said Mr. Hoopdriver, wheeling his machine back to
the chalky road. " I must scorch till I overtake
them."

He mounted and rode as rapidly as the heat and a
lingering lassitude permitted. Now and then he had
to dismount to examine the surface where the road
forked. He enjoyed that rather. " Trackin','' he said
aloud, and decided in the privacy of his own mind
that he had a wonderful instinct for ' spoor.' So he
came past Goodwood station and Lavant, and ap-
proached Chichester towards four o'clock. And then
came a terrible thing. In places the road became
hard, in places were the crowded indentations of a
recent flock of sheep, and at last in the throat of the
town cobbles and the stony streets branching east,
west, north, and south, at a stone cross under the
shadow of the cathedral the tracks vanished. " O
Cricky !" said Mr. Hoopdriver, dismounting in dismay
and standing agape. "Dropped anything?" said an
inhabitant at the kerb. "Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
" I've lost the spoor," and walked upon his way, leav-

134 The Wheels of Chance

ing the inhabitant marvelling what part of a bicycle a
spoor might be. Mr. Hoopdriver, abandoning track-
ing, began asking people if they had seen a Young
Lady in Grey on a bicycle. Six casual people hadn't,
and he began to feel the inquiry was conspicuous, and
desisted. But what was to be done ?

Hoopdriver was hot, tired, and hungry, and full of
the first gnawings of a monstrous remorse. He
decided to get himself some tea and meat, and in the
Royal George he meditated over the business in a
melancholy frame enough. They had passed out of his
world — vanished, and all his wonderful dreams of
some vague, crucial interference collapsed like a castle
of cards. What a fool he had been not to stick to
them like a leech ! He might have thought ! But
there ! — what was the good of that sort of thing now?
He thought of her tears, of her helplessness, of the
bearing of the other man in brown, and his wrath and
disappointment surged higher. " What can I do ? "
said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud, bringing his fist down
beside the teapot.

What would Sherlock Holmes have done ? Perhaps,
after all, there might be such things as clues in the
world, albeit the age of miracles was past. But to
look for a clue in this intricate network of cobbled
streets, to examine every muddy interstice ! There
was a chance by looking about and inquiry at the

The Wheels of Chance. 135

various inns. Upon that he began. But of course
they might have ridden straight through and scarcely
a soul have marked them. And then came a posi-
tively brilliant idea. " 'Ow many ways are there out
of Chichester?" said Mr. Hoopdriver. It was really
equal to Sherlock Holmes — that. "If they've made
tracks, I shall find those tracks. If not — they're in
the town." He was then in East Street, and he
started at once to make the circuit of the place, dis-
covering incidentally that Chichester is a walled city.
In passing, he made inquiries at the Black Swan, the
Crown, and the Red Lion Hotel. At six o'clock in
the evening, he was walking downcast, intent, -as one
who had dropped money, along the road towards Bog-
nor, kicking up the dust with his shoes and fretting
with disappointed pugnacity. A thwarted, crestfallen
Hoopdriver it was, as you may well imagine. And
then suddenly there jumped upon his attention — a
broad line ribbed like a shilling, and close beside it
one chequered, that ever and again split into two.
" Found ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver and swung round on
his heel at once, and back to the Royal George,
helter skelter, for the bicycle they were minding for
him. The ostler thought he was confoundedly impe-
rious, considering his machine.

AT BOGNOR
XXI

THAT seductive gentleman, Bechamel, had been
working up to a crisis. He had started upon this
elopement in a vein of fine romance, immensely
proud of his wickedness, and really as much in love
as an artificial oversoul can be, with Jessie. But
either she was the profoundest of coquettes or she had
not the slightest element of Passion (with a large P)
in her composition. It warred with all his ideas of
himself and the feminine mind to think that under
their flattering circumstances she really could be so
vitally deficient. He found her persistent coolness,
her more or less evident contempt for himself, exas-
perating in the highest degree. He put it to himself
that she was enough to provoke a saint, and tried to
think that was piquant and enjoyable, but the blisters
on his vanity asserted themselves. The fact is, he
was, under this standing irritation, getting down to
the natural man in himself for once, and the natu-
ral man in himself, in spite of Oxford and the
136

The Wheels of Chance 137

Junior Reviewers' Club, was a Palaeolithic creature
of simple tastes and violent methods. "I'll be level
with you yet," ran like a plough through the soil of
his thoughts.

Then there was this infernal detective. Bechamel
had told his wife he was going to Davos to see Carter.
To that he had fancied she was reconciled, but how
she would take this exploit was entirely problem-
atical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views,
and she measured marital infidelity largely by its
proximity to herself. Out of her sight, and more
particularly out of the sight of the other women of
her set, vice of the recognised description was, per-
haps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings,
men, but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was
bound to make a fuss, and these fusses invariably
took the final form of a tightness of money for
Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was heroic of him
to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of
matronly Valkyrie, and the noise of pursuit and
vengeance was in the air. The idyll still had the
front of the stage. That accursed detective, it
seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at
any rate, gave a night's respite. But things must be
brought to an issue forthwith.

By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-

138 The Wheels of Chance

room in the Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had
come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in the face and
with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last
struggle with him. He had tricked her this time,
effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was
booked as Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to
enter their room, and her eccentricity of eating with
unwashed hands, she had so far kept up the appear-
ances of things before the waiter. But the dinner
was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his
better nature and made extravagant statements of her
plans to fool him.

He was white and vicious by this time, and his
anger quivered through his pose of brilliant wicked-
ness.

"I will go to the station," she said. "I will go
back — "

"The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42."

"I will appeal to the police — "

"You don't know them."

"I will tell these hotel people."

"They will turn you out of doors. You're in such
a thoroughly false position now. They don't under-
stand— unconventionally, down here."

She stamped her foot. "If I wander about the
streets all night — " she said.

" You who have never been out alone after dusk ?

The Wheels of Chance 139

Do you know what the streets of a charming little
holiday resort are like — "

" I don't care," she said. " I can go to the clergy-
man here."

" He ' s a charming man. Unmarried. And men are
really more alike than you think. And anyhow — "

"Well?"

" How can you explain the last two nights to any-
one now? The mischief is done, Jessie."

"You cur," she said, and suddenly put her hand
to her breast. He thought she meant to faint, but
she stood, with the colour gone from her face.

" No, " he said. " I love you. "

" Love ! " said she.

"Yes — love."

"There are ways yet," she said, after a pause.

" Not for you. You are too full of life and hope
yet for, what is it? — not the dark arch nor the black
flowing river. Don't you think of it. You'll only
shirk it when the moment comes, and turn it all
into comedy."

She turned round abruptly from him and stood
looking out across the parade at the shining sea over
which the afterglow of day fled before the rising
moon. He maintained his attitude. The blinds
were still up, for she had told the waiter not to draw
them. There was silence for some moments.

140 The Wheels of Chance

At last he spoke in as persuasive a voice as he
could summon. "Take it sensibly, Jessie. Why
should we, who have so much in common, quarrel
into melodrama? I swear I love you. You are all
that is bright and desirable to me. I am stronger
than you, older; man to your woman. To find yvu
too — conventional ! "

She looked at him over her shoulder, and he
noticed with a twinge of delight how her little chin
came out beneath the curve of her cheek.

"Man!" she said. "Man to my woman! Do
men lie? Would a man use his five and thirty years'
experience to outwit a girl of seventeen? Man to
my woman indeed ! That surely is the last insult ! "

"Your repartee is admirable, Jessie. I should say
they do, though — all that and more also when their
hearts were set on such a girl as yourself. For God's
sake drop this shrewishness ! Why should you be so
— difficult to me? Here am I with my reputation,
my career, at your feet. Look here, Jessie — on my
honour, I will marry you — "

"God forbid," she said, so promptly that she never
learnt he had a wife, even then. It occurred to him
then for the first time, in the flash of her retort, that
she did not know he was married.

"'Tis only a pre-nuptial settlement," he said,
following that hint.

141

142 The Wheels of Chance

He paused.

"You must be sensible. The thing's your own
doing. Come out on the beach now — the beach
here is splendid, and the moon will soon be high."

"/ o/<?«'/," she said, stamping her foot.

"Well, well — "

" Oh ! leave me alone. Let me think — "

"Think," he said, "if you want to. It's your cry
always. But you can't save yourself by thinking,
my dear girl. You can't save yourself in any way
now. If saving it is — this parsimony — "

"Oh, go — go."

"Very well. I will go. I will go and smoke a
cigar. And think of you, dear. . . . But do you
think I should do all this if I did not care ? "

"Go," she whispered, without glancing round.
She continued to stare out of the window. He
stood looking at her for a moment, with a strange
light in his eyes. He made a step towards her. " I
have you," he said. "You are mine. Netted —
caught. But mine." He would have gone up to
her and laid his hand upon her, but he did not dare
to do that yet. "I have you in my hand," he said,
" in my power. Do you hear — Power / "

She remained impassive. He stared at her for
half a minute, and then, with a superb gesture that
was lost upon her, went to the door. Surely the

The Wheels of Chance 143

instinctive abasement of her sex before Strength was
upon his side. He told himself that his battle was
won. She heard the handle move and the catch
click as the door closed behind him.

XXII

AND now without in the twilight behold Mr. Hoop-
driver, his cheeks hot, his eye bright ! His brain is
in a tumult. The nervous, obsequious Hoopdriver,
to whom I introduced you some days since, has
undergone a wonderful change. Ever since he lost
that 'spoor ' in Chichester, he has been tormented
by the most horrible visions of the shameful insults
that may be happening. The strangeness of new sur-
roundings has been working to strip off the habitual
servile from him. Here was moonlight rising over
the memory of a red sunset, dark shadows and glow-
ing orange lamps, beauty somewhere mysteriously
rapt away from him, tangible wrong in a brown suit
and an unpleasant face, flouting him. Mr. Hoop-
driver for the time was in the world of Romance and
Knight-errantry, divinely forgetful of his social posi-
tion or hers; forgetting, too, for the time any of the
wretched timidities that had tied him long since
behind the counter in his proper place. He was
angry and adventurous. It was all about him, this
vivid drama he had fallen into, and it was eluding
144

The Wheels of Chance 145

him. He was far too grimly in earnest to pick up
that lost thread and make a play of it now. The
man was living. He did not pose when he alighted
at the coffee tavern even, nor when he made his hasty
meal.

As Bechamel crossed from the Vicuna towards the
esplanade, Hoopdriver, disappointed and exasper-
ated, came hurrying round the corner from the
Temperance Hotel. At the sight of Bechamel, his
heart jumped, and the tension of his angry suspense
exploded into, rather than gave place to, an excited
activity of mind. They were at the Vicuna, and she
was there now alone. It was the occasion he sought.
But he would give Chance no chance against him.
He went back round the corner, sat down on the
seat, and watched Bechamel recede into the dimness
up the esplanade, before he got up and walked into
the hotel entrance. "A lady cyclist in grey," he
asked for, and followed boldly on the waiter's heels.
The door of the dining-room was opening before he
felt a qualm. And then suddenly he was nearly
minded to turn and run for it, and his features
seemed to him to be convulsed.

She turned with a start, and looked at him with
something between terror and hope in her eyes.

" Can I — have a few words — with you, alone ? "
said Mr. Hoopdriver, controlling his breath with

146 The Wheels of Chance

difficulty. She hesitated, and then motioned the
waiter to withdraw.

Mr. Hoopdriver watched the door shut. He had
intended to step out into the middle of the room,
fold his arms and say, " You are in trouble. I am
a Friend. Trust me." Instead of which he stood
panting and then spoke with sudden familiarity,
hastily, guiltily: "Look here. I don't know what
the Juice is up, but I think there's something wrong.
Excuse my intruding — if it isn't so. I'll do any-
thing you like to help you out of the scrape — if
you're in one. That's my meaning, I believe.
What can I do? I would do anything to help
you."

Her brow puckered, as she watched him make,
with infinite emotion, this remarkable speech.
" You ! " she said. She was tumultuously weighing
possibilities in her mind, and he had scarcely ceased
when she had made her resolve.

She stepped a pace forward. "You are a gentle-
man," she said.

"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Can I trust you?"

She did not wait for his assurance. " I must leave
this hotel at once. Come here."

She took his arm and led him to the window.
"You can just see the gate. It is still open.

The Wheels of Chance 147

Through that are our bicycles. Go down, get them
out, and I will come down to you. Dare you? "

"Get your bicycle out in the road?"

"Bo^Ji. Mine alone is no good. At once. Dare
you?"

"Which way?"

"Go out by the front door and round. I will
follow in one minute."

"Right!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, and went.

He had to get those bicycles. Had he been told
to go out and kill Bechamel he would have done it.
His head was a Maelstrom now. He walked out of
the hotel, along the front, and into the big, black-
shadowed coach yard. He looked round. There
were no bicycles visible. Then a man emerged
from the dark, a short man in a short, black, shiny
jacket. Hoopdriver was caught. He made no
attempt to turn and run for it. "I've been giving
your machines a wipe over, sir," said the man,
recognising the suit, and touching his cap. Hoop-
driver's intelligence now was a soaring eagle ; he
swooped on the situation at once. "That's right,"
he said, and added, before the pause became
marked, "Where is mine? I want to look at the
chain."

The man led him into an open shed, and went
fumbling for a lantern. Hoopdriver moved the

148 The Wheels of Chance

lady's machine out of his way to the door, and then
laid hands on the man's machine and wheeled it out
of the shed into the yard. The gate stood open and
beyond was the pale road and a clump of trees black
in the twilight. He stooped and examined the
chain with trembling fingers. How was it to be
done? Something behind the gate seemed to flutter.
The man must be got rid of anyhow.

"I say," said Hoopdriver, with an inspiration,
"can you get me a screwdriver? "

The man simply walked across the shed, opened
and shut a box, and came up to the kneeling Hoop-
driver with a screwdriver in his hand. Hoopdriver
felt himself a lost man. He took the screwdriver
with a tepid " Thanks, " and incontinently had another
inspiration.

"I say," he said again.

"Well?"

"This is Miles too big."

The man lit the lantern, brought it up to Hoop-
driver and put it down on the ground. "Want a
smaller screwdriver? " he said.

Hoopdriver had his handkerchief out and sneezed
a prompt atichew. It is the orthodox thing when
you wish to avoid recognition. "As small as
you have," he said, out of his pocket handker-
chief.

The Wheels of Chance 149

"I ain't got none smaller than that," said the
ostler.

"Won't do, really," said Hoopdriver, still wallow-
ing in his handkerchief.

"I'll see wot they got in the 'ouse, if you like,
sir," said the man. "If you would," said Hoop-
driver. And as the man's heavily nailed boots went
clattering down the yard, Hoopdriver stood up, took
a noiseless step to the lady's machine, laid trembling
hands on its handle and saddle, and prepared for a
rush.

The scullery door opened momentarily and sent a
beam of warm, yellow light up the road, shut again
behind the man, and forthwith Hoopdriver rushed
the machines towards the gate. A dark grey form
came fluttering to meet him. "Give me this," she
said, "and bring yours."

He passed the thing to her, touched her hand in
the darkness, ran back, seized Bechamel's machine,
and followed.

The yellow light of the scullery door suddenly
flashed upon the cobbles again. It was too late now
to do anything but escape. He heard the ostler
shout behind him, and came into the road. She
was up and dim already. He got into the saddle
without a blunder. In a moment the ostler was in
the gateway with a full-throated "Hit sir! That

The Wheels of Chance

ain't allowed; " and Hoopdriver was overtaking the
Young Lady in Grey. For some moments the earth
seemed alive with shouts of, "Stop 'em!" and the
shadows with ambuscades of police. The road swept
round, and they were riding out of sight of the hotel,
and behind dark hedges, side by side.

She was weeping with excitement as he overtook
her. "Brave," she said, "brave!" and he ceased
to feel like a hunted thief. He looked over his
shoulder and about him, and saw that they were
already out of Bognor — for the Vicuna stands at the
very westernmost extremity of the sea front — and
riding on a fair wide road.

XXIII

THE ostler (being a fool) rushed violently down
the road vociferating after them. Then he returned
panting to the Vicuna Hotel, and rinding a group of
men outside the entrance, who wanted to know what
was up, stopped to give them the cream of the ad-
venture. That gave the fugitives five minutes. Then
pushing breathlessly into the bar, he had to make it
clear to the barmaid what the matter was, and the
' gov'nor ' being out, they spent some more precious
time wondering ' what — ever ' was to be done !
in which the two customers returning from outside
joined with animation. There were also moral re-
marks and other irrelevant contributions. There
were conflicting ideas of telling the police and pursu-
ing the flying couple on a horse. That made ten
minutes. Then Stephen, the waiter, who had shown
Hoopdriver up, came down and lit wonderful lights
and started quite a fresh discussion by the simple
question " Which ? " That turned ten minutes into
a quarter of an hour. And in the midst of this dis-
cussion, making a sudden and awe-stricken silence,

152

The Wheels of Chance 153

appeared Bechamel in the hall beyond the bar,
walked with a resolute air to the foot of the staircase,
and passed out of sight. You conceive the backward
pitch of that exceptionally shaped cranium ? Incred-
ulous eyes stared into one another's in the bar, as his
paces, muffled by the stair carpet, went up to the
landing, turned, reached the passage and walked into
the dining-room overhead.

" It wasn't that one at all, miss," said the ostler,
" I'd swear."

"Well, that's Mr. Beaumont," said the barmaid,
" — anyhow."

Their conversation hung comatose in the air,
switched up by Bechamel. They listened together.
His feet stopped. Turned. Went out of the dining-
room. Down the passage to the bedroom. Stopped
again.

" Poor chap ! " said the barmaid. " She's a
wicked woman ! "

" Sssh ! " said Stephen.

After a pause Bechamel went back to the dining-
room. They heard a chair creak under him. Inter-
lude of conversational eyebrows.

"I'm going up," said Stephen, "to break the
melancholy news to him."

Bechamel looked up from a week-old newspaper
as, without knocking, Stephen entered. Bechamel's

154 The Wheels of Chance

face suggested a different expectation. " Beg pardon,
sir," said Stephen, with a diplomatic cough.

"Well?" said Bechamel, wondering suddenly if
Jessie had kept some of her threats. If so, he was
in for an explanation. But he had it ready. She was
a monomaniac. " Leave me alone with her," he would
say ; " I know how to calm her."

" Mrs. Beaumont," said Stephen.

" Well? "

" Has gone."

He rose with a fine surprise. " Gone ! " he said
with a half laugh.

" Gone, sir. On her bicycle."

« On her bicycle ! Why?"

" She went, sir, with Another Gentleman."

This time Bechamel was really startled. "An —
other Gentlemen ! Who ? "

" Another gentleman in brown, sir. Went into the
yard, sir, got out the two bicycles, sir, and went off,
sir — about twenty minutes ago."

Bechamel stood with his eyes round and his
knuckle on his hips. Stephen, watching him with im-
mense enjoyment, speculated whether this abandoned
husband would weep or curse, or rush off at once
in furious pursuit. But as yet he seemed merely
stunned.

" Brown clothes ? " he said. " And fairish ? "

The Wheels of Chance 155

" A little like yourself, sir, — in the dark. The
ostler, sir, Jim Duke — "

Bechamel laughed awry. Then, with infinite
fervour, he said — But let us put in blank car-
tridge — he said, " 1 "

" I might have thought ! "

He flung himself into the armchair.

" Damn her," said Bechamel, for all the world like
a common man. " I'll chuck this infernal business !
They've gone, eigh?"

"Yessir."

" Well, let 'em GO," said Bechamel, making a mem-
orable saying. "Let 'em GO. Who cares? And I
wish him luck. And bring me some Bourbon as
fast as you can, there's a good chap. I'll take that,
and then I'll have another look round Bognor before
I turn in."

Stephen was too surprised to say anything but
"Bourbon, sir?"

" Go on," said Bechamel. " Damn you ! "

Stephen's sympathies changed at once. "Yessir,"
he murmured, fumbling for the door handle, and left
the room, marvelling. Bechamel, having in this way
satisfied his sense of appearances, and comported
himself as a Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's
footsteps had passed, vented the cream of his feelings
in a stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his

156 The Wheels of Chance

wife or her stepmother had sent the detective, she
had evidently gone off with him, and that little busi-
ness was over. And he was here, stranded and sold,
an ass, and as it were, the son of many generations
of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it
seemed more probable, after all, that the girl had
escaped through her stepmother. In which case the
business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour
of explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed.
Then abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey
knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again,
and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up
in a gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and
incontinently sat down again with a concussion that
stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged the
arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again.
"Of all the accursed fools that were ever spawned,"
he was chanting, " I, Bechamel — " when with an
abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door, Stephen
entered with the Bourbon.

THE MOONLIGHT RIDE
XXIV

AND so the twenty minutes' law passed into an in-
finity. We leave the wicked Bechamel clothing him-
self with cursing as with a garment, — the wretched
creature has already sufficiently sullied our modest
but truthful pages, — we leave the eager little group
in the bar of the Vicuna Hotel, we leave all Bognor
as we have left all Chichester and Midhurst and
Haslemere and Guildford and Ripley and Putney, and
follow this dear fool of a Hoopdriver of ours and his
Young Lady in Grey out upon the moonlight road.
How they rode ! How their hearts beat together and
their breath came fast, and how every shadow was
anticipation and every noise pursuit ! For all that
flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world of Romance.
Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were
not lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on,
after the fashion of a hero born. Had Bechamel
arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel, Hoopdriver
had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a reality

158 The Wheels of Chance

and drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement,
Glory ! And she by the side of him ! He had seen
her face in shadow, with the morning sunlight tangled
in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic with that
warm light in her face, he had seen her troubled and
her eyes bright with tears. But what light is there
lighting a face like hers, to compare with the soft
glamour of the midsummer moon?

The road turned northward, going round through
the outskirts of Bognor, in one place dark and heavy
under a thick growth of trees, then amidst villas again,
some warm and lamplit, some white and sleeping
in the moonlight ; then between hedges, over which
they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying
mist. They scarcely heeded whither they rode at
first, being only anxious to get away, turning once
westward when the spire of Chichester cathedral
rose suddenly near them out of the dewy night, pale
and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little,
just a rare word now and then, at a turning, at a
footfall, at a roughness in the road.

She seemed to be too intent upon escape to give
much thought to him, but after the first tumult of
the adventure, as flight passed into mere steady rid-
ing, his mind became an enormous appreciation of
the position. The night was a warm white silence
save for the subtile running of their chains. He

The Wheels of Chance 159

looked sideways at her as she sat beside him with her
ankles gracefully ruling the treadles. Now the road
turned westward, and she was a dark grey outline
against the shimmer of the moon ; and now they
faced northwards, and the soft cold light passed
caressingly over her hair and touched her brow and
cheek.

There is a magic quality in moonshine ; it touches
all that is sweet and beautiful^ and the rest of the
night is hidden. It has created the fairies, whom the
sunlight kills, and fairyland rises again in our hearts
at the sight of it, the voices of the filmy route, and
their faint, soul-piercing melodies. By the moonlight
every man, dull clod though he be by day, tastes
something of Endymion, takes something of the youth
and strength of Endymion, and sees the dear white
goddess shining at him from his Lady's eyes. The
firm substantial daylight things become ghostly and
elusive, the hills beyond are a sea of unsubstantial
texture, the world a visible spirit, the spiritual within
us rises out of its darkness, loses something of its
weight and body, and swims up towards heaven.
This road that was a mere rutted white dust, hot
underfoot, blinding to the eye, is now a soft grey
silence, with the glitter of a crystal grain set starlike
in its silver here and there. Overhead, riding serenely
through the spacious blue, is the mother of the silence,

160 The Wheels of Chance

she who has spiritualised the world, alone save for two
attendant steady shining stars. And in silence under
her benign influence, under the benediction of her
light, rode our two wanderers side by side through
the transfigured and transfiguring night.

Nowhere was the moon shining quite so brightly as
in Mr. Hoopdriver's skull. At the turnings of the
road he made his decisions with an air of profound
promptitude (and quite haphazard). "The Right,"
he would say. Or again "The Left," as one who
knew. So it was that in the space of an hour they
came abruptly down a little lane, full tilt upon the
sea. Grey beach to the right of them and to the
left, and a little white cottage fast asleep inland of
a sleeping fishing-boat. " 'Ullo ! " said Mr. Hoop-
driver, sotto voce. They dismounted abruptly. Stunted
oaks and thorns rose out of the haze of moonlight
that was tangled in the hedge on either side.

" You are safe," said Mr. Hoopdriver, sweeping off
his cap with an air and bowing courtly.

"Where are we?"

"But where?"

" Chichester Harbour." He waved his arm seaward
as though it was a goal.

"Do you think they will follow us?"
" We have turned and turned again."

The Wheels of Chance 161

It seemed to Hoopdriver that he heard her sob.
She stood dimly there, holding her machine, and he,
holding his, could go no nearer to her to see if she
sobbed for weeping or for want of breath. "What
are we to do now?" her voice asked.

"Are you tired?" he asked.

" I will do what has to be done."

The two black figures in the broken light were
silent for a space. " Do you know," she said, "I am
not afraid of you. I am sure you are honest to me.
And I do not even know your name ! "

He was taken with a sudden shame of his homely
patronymic. " It's an ugly name," he said. " But
you are right in trusting me. I would — I would
do anything for you. . . . This is nothing."

She caught at her breath. She did not care to
ask why. But compared with Bechamel ! — " We
take each other on trust," she said. " Do you want
to know — how things are with me?

" That man," she went on, after the assent of his
listening silence, " promised to help and protect me.
I was unhappy at home — never mind why. A step-
mother — Idle, unoccupied, hindered, cramped, that
is enough, perhaps. Then he came into my life, and
talked to me of art and literature, and set my brain
on fire. I wanted to come out into the world, to be a
human being — not a thing in a hutch. And he — "

1 62 The Wheels of Chance

" I know," said Hoopdriver.

" And now, here I am — "

" I will do anything," said Hoopdriver.

She thought. " You cannot imagine my step-
mother. No! I could not describe her — "

" I am entirely at your service. I will help you
with all my power."

" I have lost an Illusion and found a Knight-
errant." She spoke of Bechamel as the Illusion.

Mr. Hoopdriver felt flattered. But he had no
adequate answer.

"I'm thinking," he said, full of a rapture of pro-
tective responsibility, " what we had best be doing.
You are tired, you know. And we can't wander all
night — after the day we've had."

"That was Chichester we were near?" she asked.

" If," he meditated, with a tremble in his voice,
"you would make me your brother, Miss Beaumont"

"Yes?"

" We could stop there together — "

She took a minute to answer. " I am going to
light these lamps," said Hoopdriver. He bent down
to his own, and struck a match on his shoe. She
looked at his face in its light, grave and intent. How
could she ever have thought him common or absurd?

"But you must tell me your name — brother," she
said.

164 The Wheels of Chance

"Er — Carrington," said Mr. Hoopdriver, after a
momentary pause. Who would be Hoopdriver on a
night like this?

"But the Christian name?"

" Christian name ? My Christian name. Well —
Chris." He snapped his lamp and stood up. "If
you will hold my machine, I will light yours," he
said.

She came round obediently and took his machine,
and for a moment they stood face to face. "My
name, brother Chris," she said, " is Jessie."

He looked into her eyes, and his excitement seemed
arrested. "Jessie" he repeated slowly. The mute
emotion of his face affected her strangely. She had
to speak. " It's not such a very wonderful name, is
it?" she said, with a laugh to break the intensity.

He opened his mouth and shut it again, and, with a
sudden wincing of his features, abruptly turned and
bent down to open the lantern in front of her machine.
She looked down at him, almost kneeling in front of
her, with an unreasonable approbation in her eyes. It
was, as I have indicated, the hour and season of the
full moon.

XXV

MR. HOOPDRIVER conducted the rest of that night's
journey with the same confident dignity as before,
and it was chiefly by good luck and the fact that most
roads about a town converge thereupon, that Chi-
chester was at last attained. It seemed at first as
though everyone had gone to bed, but the Red Hotel
still glowed yellow and warm. It was the first time
Hoopdriver had dared the mysteries of a ' first-class '
hotel. But that night he was in the mood to dare
anything.

" So you found your Young Lady at last," said the
ostler of the Red Hotel; for it chanced he was one of
those of whom Hoopdriver had made inquiries in the
afternoon.

" Quite a misunderstanding," said Hoopdriver, with
splendid readiness. " My sister had gone to Bognor
But I brought her back here. I've took a fancy to
this place. And the moonlight's simply dee-vine."

" We've had supper, thenks, and we're tired," said
Mr. Hoopdriver. "I suppose you won't take any-
thing,— Jessie? "

165

1 66 The Wheels of Chance

The glory of having her, even as a sister ! and to
call her Jessie like that ! But he carried it off splen-
didly, as he felt himself bound to admit. " Good-night,
Sis," he said, " and pleasant dreams. I'll just 'ave a
look at this paper before I turn in." But this was
living indeed ! he told himself.

So gallantly did Mr. Hoopdriver comport himself
up to the very edge of the Most Wonderful Day of all.
It had begun early, you will remember, with a vigil in
a little sweetstuff shop next door to the Angel at Mid-
hurst. But to think of all the things that had hap-
pened since then ! He caught himself in the middle
of a yawn, pulled out his watch, saw the time was half-
past eleven, and marched off, with a fine sense of hero-
ism, bedward.

THE SURBITON INTERLUDE
XXVI

AND here, thanks to the glorious institution of
sleep, comes a break in the narrative again. These
absurd young people are safely tucked away now,
their heads full of glowing nonsense, indeed, but
the course of events at any rate is safe from any
fresh developments through their activities for the
next eight hours or more. They are both sleeping
healthily you will perhaps be astonished to hear.
Here is the girl — what girls are coming to nowa-
days only Mrs. Lynn Linton can tell ! — in company
with an absolute stranger, of low extraction and
uncertain accent, unchaperoned and unabashed; in-
deed, now she fancies she is safe, she is, if any-
thing, a little proud of her own share in these
transactions. Then this Mr. Hoopdriver of yours,
roseate idiot that he is ! is in illegal possession of a
stolen bicycle, a stolen young lady, and two stolen
names, established with them in an hotel that is
quite beyond his means, and immensely proud of
167

1 68 The Wheels of Chance

himself in a somnolent way for these incomparable
follies. There are occasions when a moralising
novelist can merely wring his hands and leave mat-
ters to take their course. For all Hoopdriver knows
or cares he may be locked up the very first thing
to-morrow morning for the rape of the cycle. Then
in Bognor, let alone that melancholy vestige,
Bechamel (with whom our dealings are, thank Good-
ness ! over), there is a Coffee Tavern with a steak Mr.
Hoopdriver ordered, done to a cinder long ago, his
American-cloth parcel in a bedroom, and his own
proper bicycle, by way of guarantee, carefully locked
up in the hayloft. To-morrow he will be a Mystery,
and they will be looking for his body along the sea
front. And so far we have never given a glance at
the desolate home in Surbiton, familiar to you no
doubt through the medium of illustrated interviews,
where the unhappy stepmother —

That stepmother, it must be explained, is quite
well known to you. That is a little surprise I have
prepared for you. She is 'Thomas Plantagenet, '
the gifted authoress of that witty and daring book,
"A Soul Untrammelled," and quite an excellent
woman in her way, — only it is such a crooked way.
Her real name is Milton. She is a widow and a
charming one, only ten years older than Jessie, and
she is always careful to dedicate her more daring

The Wheels of Chance 169

works to the ' sacred memory of my husband ' to
show that there's nothing personal, you know, in the
matter. Considering her literary reputation (she
was always speaking of herself as one ' martyred for
truth,' because the critics advertised her written
indecorums in column long ' slates '), — considering
her literary reputation, I say, she was one of the
most respectable women it is possible to imagine.
She furnished correctly, dressed correctly, had severe
notions of whom she might meet, went to church,
and even at times took the sacrament in some
esoteric spirit. And Jessie she brought up so care-
fully that she never even let her read "A Soul
Untrammelled." Which, therefore, naturally enough,
Jessie did, and went on from that to a feast of
advanced literature. Mrs. Milton not only brought
up Jessie carefully, but very slowly, so that at seventeen
she was still a clever schoolgirl (as you have seen her)
and quite in the background of the little literary circle
of unimportant celebrities which ' Thomas Plantag-
enet ' adorned. Mrs. Milton knew Bechamel's rep-
utation of being a dangerous man ; but then bad
men are not bad women, and she let him come to
her house to show she was not afraid — she took no
account of Jessie. When the elopement came,
therefore, it was a double disappointment to her,
for she perceived his hand by a kind of instinct.

1 70 The Wheels of Chance

She did the correct thing. The correct thing, as
you know, is to take hansom cabs, regardless of
expense, and weep and say you do not know what
to do, round the circle of your confidential friends.
She could not have ridden nor wept more had Jessie
been her own daughter — she showed the properest
spirit. And she not only showed it, but felt it.

Mrs. Milton, as a successful little authoress and
still more successful widow of thirty-two, — " Thomas
Plantagenet is a charming woman," her reviewers
used to write invariably, even if they spoke ill of
her, — found the steady growth of Jessie into woman-
hood an unmitigated nuisance and had been willing
enough to keep her in the background. And Jessie
— who had started this intercourse at fourteen with
abstract objections to stepmothers — had been active
enough in resenting this. Increasing rivalry and
antagonism had sprung up between them, until they
could engender quite a vivid hatred from a dropped
hairpin or the cutting of a book with a sharpened
knife. There is very little deliberate wickedness in
the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives
much the same results indeed, but in the ethical
laboratory it shows a different nature. And when
the disaster came, Mrs. Milton's remorse for their
gradual loss of sympathy and her share in the losing
of it, was genuine enough.

The Wheels of Chance 171

You may imagine the comfort she got from her
friends, and how West Kensington and Netting Hill
and Hampstead, the literary suburbs, those decent
penitentiaries of a once Bohemian calling, hummed
with the business. Her ' Men ' — as a charming
literary lady she had, of course, an organised corps

— were immensely excited, and were sympathetic;
helpfully energetic, suggestive, alert, as their ideals
of their various dispositions required them to be*
"Any news of Jessie?" was the pathetic opening of
a dozen melancholy but interesting conversations.
To her Men she was not perhaps so damp as she was
to her women friends, but in a quiet way she was
even more touching. For three days, Wednesday
that is, Thursday, and Friday, nothing was heard of
the fugitives. It was known that Jessie, wearing a
patent costume with button-up skirts, and mounted
on a diamond frame safety with Dunlops, and a
loofah covered saddle, had ridden forth early in the
morning, taking with her about two pounds seven
shillings in money, and a grey touring case packed,
and there, save for a brief note to her stepmother,

— a declaration of independence, it was said, an
assertion of her Ego containing extensive and
very annoying quotations from "A Soul Untram-
melled," and giving no definite intimation of
her plans — knowledge ceased. That note was

172 The Wheels of Chance

shown to few, and then only in the strictest con-
fidence.

But on Friday evening late came a breathless Man
Friend, Widgery, a correspondent of hers, who had
heard of her trouble among the first. He had been
touring in Sussex, — his knapsack was still on his
back, — and he testified hurriedly that at a place
called Midhurst, in the bar of an hotel called the
Angel, he had heard from a barmaid a vivid account
of a Young Lady in Grey. Descriptions tallied.
But who was the man in brown? "The poor, mis-
guided girl! I must go to her at once," she said,
choking, and rising with her hand to her heart.

"It's impossible to-night. There are no more
trains. I looked on my way."

"A mother's love," she said. " I bear her that"

"I know you do." He spoke with feeling, for no
one admired his photographs of scenery more than
Mrs. Milton. " It's more than she deserves."

"Oh, don't speak unkindly of her! She has been
misled."

It was really very friendly of him. He declared
he was only sorry his news ended there. Should he
follow them, and bring her back ? He had come to
her because he knew of her anxiety. " It is good of
you," she said, and quite instinctively took and
pressed his hand. " And to think of that poor girl

The Wheels of Chance 173

— to-night! It's dreadful." She looked into the
fire that she had lit when he came in, the warm light
fell upon her dark purple dress, and left her features
in a warm shadow. She looked such a slight, frail
thing to be troubled so. "We must follow her."
Her resolution seemed magnificent. "I have no
one to go with me."

"He must marry her," said the man.

"She has no friends. We have no one. After
all — Two women. So helpless."

And this fair-haired little figure was the woman
that people who knew her only from her books,
called bold, prurient even ! Simply because she was
great-hearted — intellectual. He was overcome by
the unspeakable pathos of her position.

" Mrs. Milton," he said. " Hetty ! "

She glanced at him. The overflow was imminent.
"Not now," she said, "not now. I must find her
first."

"Yes," he said with intense emotion. (He was
one of those big, fat men who feel deeply.) "But
let me help you. At least let me help you."

"But can you spare time?" she said. "For me"

" For you — "

"But what can I do? what can we do? "

"Go to Midhurst. Follow her on. Trace her.
She was there on Thursday night, last night. She

174

The Wheels of Chance 175

cycled out of the town. Courage!" he said. "We
will save her yet! "

She put out her hand and pressed his again.

"Courage!" he repeated, finding it so well re-
ceived.

There were alarms and excursions without. She
turned her back to the fire, and he sat down suddenly
in the big armchair, which suited his dimensions
admirably. Then the door opened, and the girl
showed in Dangle, who looked curiously from one
to the other. There was emotion here, he had heard
the armchair creaking, and Mrs. Milton, whose face
was flushed, displayed a suspicious alacrity to explain.
"You, too," she said, "are one of my good friends.
And we have news of her at last."

It was decidedly an advantage to Widgery, but
Dangle determined to show himself a man of
resource. In the end he, too, was accepted for the
Midhurst Expedition, to the intense disgust of Wid-
gery; and young Phipps, a callow youth of few words,
faultless collars, and fervent devotion, was also
enrolled before the evening was out. They would
scour the country, all three of them. She appeared
to brighten up a little, but it was evident she was
profoundly touched. She did not know what she
had done to merit such friends. Her voice broke a
little, she moved towards the door, and young Phipps,

176 The Wheels of Chance

who was a youth of action rather than of words,
sprang and opened it — proud to be first.

"She is sorely troubled," said Dangle to Widgery.

"We must do what we can for her."

"She is a wonderful woman, " said Dangle. "So
subtle, so intricate, so many faceted. She feels
this deeply."

Young Phipps said nothing, but he felt the more.

And yet they say the age of chivalry is dead !

But this is only an Interlude, introduced to give
our wanderers time to refresh themselves by good,
honest sleeping. For the present, therefore, we will
not concern ourselves with the starting of the Rescue
Party, nor with Mrs. Milton's simple but becoming
grey dress, with the healthy Widgery 's Norfolk jacket
and thick boots, with the slender Dangle 's energetic
bearing, nor with the wonderful chequerings that set
off the legs of the golf-suited Phipps. They are after
us. In a little while they will be upon us. You
must imagine as you best can the competitive raid-
ings at Midhurst of Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps.
How Widgery was great at questions, and Dangle
good at inference, and Phipps so conspicuously
inferior in everything that he felt it, and sulked
with Mrs. Milton most of the day, after the manner
of your callow youth the whole world over. Mrs.
Milton stopped at the Angel and was very sad and

The Wheels of Chance 177

charming and intelligent, and Widgery paid the bill.
In the afternoon of Saturday, Chichester was attained.
But by that time our fugitives — As you shall im-
mediately hear.

THE AWAKENING OF MR. HOOPDRIVER
XXVII

MR. HOOPDRIVER stirred on his pillow, opened his
eyes, and, staring unmeaningly, yawned. The bed-
clothes were soft and pleasant. He turned the
peaked nose that overrides the insufficient mous-
tache, up to the ceiling, a pinkish projection over
the billow of white. You might see it wrinkle as he
yawned again, and then become quiet. So matters
remained for a space. Very slowly recollection re-
turned to him. Then a shock of indeterminate
brown hair appeared, and first one watery grey eye
a-wondering, and then two ; the bed upheaved, and
you had him, his thin neck projecting abruptly from
the clothes he held about him, his face staring about
the room. He held the clothes about him, I hope
I may explain, because his night-shirt was at Bognor
in an American-cloth packet, derelict. He yawned
a third time, rubbed his eyes, smacked his lips. He
was recalling almost everything now. The pursuit,
the hotel, the tremulous daring of his entry, the swift
178

The Wheels of Chance 179

adventure of the inn yard, the moonlight — Ab-
ruptly he threw the clothes back and rose into a
sitting position on the edge of the bed. Without
was the noise of shutters being unfastened and doors
unlocked, and the passing of hoofs and wheels in the
street. He looked at his watch. Half-past six. He
surveyed the sumptuous room again.

" Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It wasn't a
dream, after all."

"I wonder what they charge for these Juiced
rooms ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, nursing one rosy
foot.

He became meditative, tugging at his insufficient
moustache. Suddenly he gave vent to a noiseless
laugh. " What a rush it was ! Rushed in and off
with his girl right under his nose. Planned it well
too. Talk of highway robbery ! Talk of brigands !
Up and off! How juiced sold he must be feeling!
It was a shave too — in the coach yard!"

Suddenly he became silent. Abruptly his eye-
brows rose and his jaw fell. " I sa — a — ay ! " said
Mr. Hoopdriver.

He had never thought of it before. Perhaps you
will understand the whirl he had been in overnight.
But one sees things clearer in the daylight. "I'm
hanged if I haven't been and stolen a blessed
bicycle."

i8o The Wheels of Chance

"Who cares?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, presently, and
his face supplied the answer.

Then he thought of the Young Lady in Grey again,
and tried to put a more heroic complexion on the
business. But of an early morning, on an empty
stomach (as with characteristic coarseness, medical
men put it) heroics are of a more difficult growth
than by moonlight. Everything had seemed ex-
ceptionally fine and brilliant, but quite natural, the
evening before.

Mr. Hoopdriver reached out his hand, took his
Norfolk jacket, laid it over his knees, and took out
the money from the little ticket pocket. " Fourteen
and six-half," he said, holding the coins in his left
hand and stroking his chin with his right. He veri-
fied, by patting, the presence of a pocketbook in the
breast pocket. " Five, fourteen, six- half/' said Mr.
Hoopdriver. « Left."

With the Norfolk jacket still on his knees, he
plunged into another silent meditation. " That
wouldn't matter," he said. "It's the bike's the
bother.

" No good going back to Bognor.

" Might send it back by carrier, of course. Thank-
ing him for the loan. Having no further use- — "
Mr. Hoopdriver chuckled and lapsed into the silent
concoction of a delightfully impudent letter. " Mr.

181

1 82 The Wheels of Chance

J. Hoopdriver presents his compliments." But the
grave note reasserted itself.

" Might trundle back there in an hour, of course,
and exchange them. My old crock's so blessed
shabby. He's sure to be spiteful too. Have me
run in, perhaps. Then she'd be in just the same old
fix, only worse. You see, I'm her Knight-errant.
It complicates things so."

His eye, wandering loosely, rested on the sponge
bath. " What the juice do they want with cream pans
in a bedroom ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, en passant.

" Best thing we can do is to set out of here as soon
as possible, anyhow. I suppose she'll go home to her
friends. That bicycle is a juicy nuisance, anyhow.
Juicy nuisance ! "

He jumped to his feet with a sudden awakening
of energy, to proceed with his toilet. Then with a
certain horror he remembered that the simple neces-
saries of that process were at Bognor ! " Lord ! "
he remarked, and whistled silently for a space.
" Rummy go ! profit and loss ; profit, one sister
with bicycle complete, wot offers ? — cheap for tooth
and 'air brush, vests, night-shirt, stockings, and
sundries.

" Make the best of it," and presently, when it came
to hair-brushing, he had to smooth his troubled locks
with his hands. It was a poor result. "Sneak out

The Wheels of Chance 183

and get a shave, I suppose, and buy a brush and so
on. Chink again ! Beard don't show much."

He ran his hand over his chin, looked at himself
steadfastly for some time, and curled his insufficient
moustache up with some care. Then he fell a-medi-
tating on his beauty. He considered himself, three-
quarter face, left and right. An expression of dis-
taste crept over his features. " Looking won't alter
it, Hoopdriver," he remarked. " You're a weedy cus-
tomer, my man. Shoulders narrow. Skimpy, anyhow."

He put his knuckles on the toilet table and re-
garded himself with his chin lifted in the air. " Good
Lord ! " he said. " What a neck ! Wonder why I
got such a thundering lump there."

He sat down on the bed, his eye still on the glass.
" If I'd been exercised properly, if I'd been fed
reasonable, if I hadn't been shoved out of a silly
school into a silly shop — But there ! the old folks
didn't know no better. The schoolmaster ought to
have. But he didn't, poor old fool ! — Still, when it
comes to meeting a girl like this — It's 'ard.

" I wonder what Adam 'd think of me — as a speci-
men. Civilisation, eigh ? Heir of the ages ! I'm
nothing. I know nothing. I can't do anything —
sketch a bit. Why wasn't I made. an artist?

" Beastly cheap, after all, this suit does look, in
the sunshine."

1 84 The Wheels of Chance

" No good, Hoopdriver. Anyhow, you don't tell
yourself any lies about it. Lovers ain't your game,
— anyway. But there's other things yet. You can
help the young lady, and you will — I suppose she'll
be going home — And that business of the bicycle's
to see to, too, my man. Forward, Hoopdriver !
If you ain't a beauty, that's no reason why you
should stop and be copped, is it ? "

And having got back in this way to a gloomy kind
of self-satisfaction, he had another attempt at his hair
preparatory to leaving his room and hurrying on
breakfast, for an early departure. While breakfast
was preparing he wandered out into South Street
and refurnished himself with the elements of luggage
again. " No expense to be spared," he murmured,
disgorging the half-sovereign.

THE DEPARTURE FROM CHICHESTER
XXVIII

HE caused his 'sister ' to be called repeatedly, and
when she came down, explained with a humorous
smile his legal relationship to the bicycle in the
yard. "Might be disagreeable, y' know." His
anxiety was obvious enough. "Very well," she said
(quite friendly); " hurry breakfast, and we'll ride out.
I want to talk things over with you. " The girl seemed
more beautiful than ever after the night's sleep; her
hair in comely dark waves from her forehead, her
ungauntleted finger-tips pink and cool. And how
decided she was! Breakfast was a nervous cere-
mony, conversation fraternal but thin ; the waiter
overawed him, and he was cowed by a multiplicity
of forks. But she called him "Chris." They dis-
cussed their route over his sixpenny county map for
the sake of talking, but avoided a decision in the
presence of the attendant. The five-pound note
was changed for the bill, and through Hoopdriver's
determination to be quite the gentleman, the waiter
185

1 86 The Wheels of Chance

and chambermaid got half a crown each and the
ostler a florin. "'Olidays," said the ostler to him-
self, without gratitude. The public mounting of the
bicycles in the street was a moment of trepidation.
A policeman actually stopped and watched them from
the opposite kerb. Suppose him to come across and
ask: " Is that your bicycle, sir?" Fight? Or drop
it and run? It was a time of bewildering apprehen-
sion, too, going through the streets of the town, so
that a milk cart barely escaped destruction under
Mr. Hoopdriver's chancy wheel. That recalled him
to a sense of erratic steering, and he pulled himself
together. In the lanes he breathed freer, and a less
formal conversation presently began.

"You've ridden out of Chichester in a great
hurry," said Jessie.

"Well, the fact of it is, I'm worried, just a little
bit. About this machine."

"Of course," she said. "I had forgotten that.
But where are we going? "

"Jest a turning or two more, if you don't mind,"
said Hoopdriver. "Jest a mile or so. I have to
think of you, you know. I should feel more easy.
If we was locked up, you know — Not that I should
mind on my own account — "

They rode with a streaky, grey sea coming and
going on their left hand. Every mile they put

The Wheels of Chance 187

between themselves and Chichester Mr. Hoopdriver
felt a little less conscience-stricken, and a little more
of the gallant desperado. Here he was riding on a
splendid machine with a Slap-up girl beside him.
What would they think of it in the Emporium if any
of them were to see him? He imagined in detail
the astonishment of Miss Isaacs and of Miss Howe.
"Why! It's Mr. Hoopdriver," Miss Isaacs would
say. "Never!" emphatically from Miss Howe.
Then he played with Briggs, and then tried the
'G. V.' in a shay. "Fancy intro juicing 'em to her —
My sister pro tern.11 He was her brother Chris —
Chris what? — Confound it ! Harringon, Hartington
— something like that. Have to keep off that topic
until he could remember. Wish he'd told her the
truth now — almost. He glanced at her. She was
riding with her eyes straight ahead of her. Think-
ing. A little perplexed, perhaps, she seemed.
He noticed how well she rode and that she rode with
her lips closed — a thing he could never manage.

Mr. Hoopdriver' s mind came round to the future.
What was she going to do? What were they both
going to do? His thoughts took a graver colour.
He had rescued her. This was fine, manly rescue
work he was engaged upon. She ought to go home,
in spite of that stepmother. He must insist gravely
but firmly upon that. She was the spirited sort, of

1 88 The Wheels of Chance

course, but still — Wonder if she had any money?
Wonder what the second-class fare from Havant to
London is ? Of course he would have to pay that —
it was the regular thing, he being a gentleman.
Then should he take her home ? He began to rough
in a moving sketch of the return. The stepmother,
repentant of her indescribable cruelties, would be
present, — even these rich people have their troubles,
— probably an uncle or two. The footman would
announce, Mr. — (bother that name !) and Miss Mil-
ton. Then two women weeping together, and a
knightly figure in the background dressed in a
handsome Norfolk jacket, still conspicuously new.
He would conceal his feeling until the very end.
Then, leaving, he would pause in the doorway in
such an attitude as Mr. George Alexander might
assume, and say, slowly and dwindlingly : " Be kind
to her — be kind to her," and so depart, heartbroken
to the meanest intelligence. But that was a matter
for the future. He would have to begin discussing
the return soon. There was no traffic along the road,
and he came up beside her (he had fallen behind in
his musing). She began to talk. "Mr. Denison,"
she began, and then, doubtfully, " That is your name?
I'm very stupid — "

"It is," said Mr. Hoopdriver. (Denison, was it?
Denison, Denison, Denison. What was she saying?)

The Wheels of Chance 189

" I wonder how far you are willing to help me ? "
Confoundedly hard to answer a question like that
on the spur of the moment, without steering wildly.
"You may rely — " said Mr. Hoopdriver, recovering
from a violent wabble. "I can assure you — I
want to help you very much. Don't consider me at
all. Leastways, consider me entirely at your ser-
vice." (Nuisance not to be able to say this kind of
thing right.)

"You see, I am so awkwardly situated."
" If I can only help you — you will make me very
happy — " There was a pause. Round a bend in
the road they came upon a grassy space between
hedge and road, set with yarrow and meadowsweet,
where a felled tree lay among the green. There she
dismounted, and propping her machine against a
stone, sat down. "Here, we can talk," she said.
"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver, expectant.
She answered after a little while, sitting, elbow on
knee, with her chin in her hand, and looking straight
in front of her. "I don't know — I am resolved to
Live my Own Life."

"Of course," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Naturally."

"I want to Live, and I want to see what life

means. I want to learn. Everyone is hurrying me,

everything is hurrying me; I want time to think."

Mr. Hoopdriver was puzzled, but admiring. It

,®*" rfJi

The Wheels of Chance 191

was wonderful how clear and ready her words were.
But then one might well speak well with a throat
and lips like that. He knew he was inadequate, but
he tried to meet the occasion. "If you let them
rush you into anything you might repent of, of
course you'd be very silly," he said.

"Don't jy0// want to learn? " she asked.

"I was wondering only this morning," he began,
and stopped.

She was too intent upon her own thoughts to notice
this insufficiency. "I find myself in life, and it
terrifies me. I seem to be like a little speck whirl-
ing on a wheel, suddenly caught up. 'What am I
here for?' I ask. Simply to be here a time — I
asked it a week ago, I asked it yesterday, and I ask
it to-day. And little things happen and the days
pass. My stepmother takes me shopping, people
come to tea, there is a new play to pass the time, or
a concert, or a novel. The wheels of the world go
on turning, turning. It is horrible. I want to do a
miracle like Joshua and stop the whirl until I have >^
fought it out. At home — It's impossible."

Mr. Hoopdriver stroked his moustache. "It is
so," he said in a meditative tone. "Things will go
on." The faint breath of summer stirred the trees,
and a bunch of dandelion puff lifted among the
meadowsweet and struck and broke into a dozen

192 The Wheels of Chance

separate threads against his knee. They flew on
apart, and sank, as the breeze fell, among the grass :
some to germinate, some to perish. His eye fol-
lowed them until they had vanished.

"I can't go back to Surbiton," said the Young
Lady in Grey.

" Eigh ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his
moustache. This was an unexpected development.

"I want to write, you see," said the Young Lady
in Grey, " to write Books and alter things. To do
Good. I want to lead a Free Life and Own myself.
I can't go back. I want to obtain a position as a
Journalist. I have been told — But I know no
one to help me at once. No one that I could go to.
There is one person — She was a mistress at my
school. If I could write to her — But then, how
could I get her answer? "

"H'mp," said Mr. Hoopdriver, very grave.

"I can't trouble you much more. You have come

— you have risked things — "

"That don't count," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "It's
double pay to let me do it, so to speak."

"It is good of you to say that. Surbiton is so
Conventional. I am resolved to be Unconventional

— at any cost. But we are so hampered. If I could
only burgeon out of all that hinders me ! I want to
struggle, to take my place in the world. I want to

The Wheels of Chance 193

be my own mistress, to shape my own career. But
my stepmother objects so. She does as she likes
herself, and is strict with me to ease her conscience.
And if I go back now, go back owning myself
beaten — " She left the rest to his imagination.

"I see that," agreed Mr. Hoopdriver. He must
help her. Within his skull he was doing some
intricate arithmetic with five pounds six and two-
pence. In some vague way he inferred from all
this that Jessie was trying to escape from an un-
desirable marriage, but was saying these things out
of modesty. His circle of ideas was so 'imited.

"You know, Mr. — I've forgotten your name
again."

Mr. Hoopdriver seemed lost in abstraction.
"You can't go back of course, quite like that," he
said thoughtfully. His ears were suddenly red and
his cheeks flushed.

" But what is your name ? "

" Name ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Why ! — Ben-
son, of course."

"Mr. Benson — yes — it's really very stupid of
me. But I can never remember names. I must
make a note on my cuff." She clicked a little silver
pencil and wrote the name down. " If I could write
to my friend. I believe she would be able to help
me to an independent life. I could write to her —

194 T^^e Wheels of Chance

or telegraph. Write, I think. I could scarcely
explain in a telegram. I know she would help me."

Clearly there was only one course open to a gentle-
man under the circumstances. "In that case," said
Mr. Hoopdriver, "if you don't mind trusting your-
self to a stranger, we might continue as we' are
perhaps. For a day or so. Until you heard."
(Suppose thirty shillings a day, that gives four days,
say four thirties is hun' and twenty, six quid, —
well, three days, say ; four ten.)

"You are very good to me."

His expression was eloquent.

"Very well, then, and thank you. It's wonderful
— it's more than I deserve that you — " She
dropped the theme abruptly. " What was our bill at
Chichester?"

"Eigh?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, feigning a certain
stupidity. There was a brief discussion. Secretly
he was delighted at her insistence in paying. She
carried her point. Their talk came round to their
immediate plans for the day. They decided to ride
easily, through Havant, and stop, perhaps, at Fare-
ham or Southampton. For the previous day had
tried them both. Holding the map extended on his
knee, Mr. Hoopdriver 's eye fell by chance on the
bicycle at his feet. "That bicycle," he remarked,
quite irrelevantly, "wouldn't look the same machine

The Wheels of Chance 195

if I got a big, double Elarum instead of that little
bell."

"Why?"

"Jest a thought." A pause.

"Very well, then, — Havant and lunch," said
Jessie, rising.

" I wish, somehow, we could have managed it
without stealing that machine," said Hoopdriver.
"Because it is stealing it, you know, come to think
of it."

"Nonsense. If Mr. Bechamel troubles you — I
will tell the whole world — if need be."

"I believe you would," said Mr. Hoopdriver,
admiring her. "You're plucky enough — goodness
knows."

Discovering suddenly that she was standing, he,
too, rose and picked up her machine. She took it
and wheeled it into the road. Then he took his own.
He paused, regarding it. " I say ! " said he. " How'd
this bike look, now, if it was enamelled grey? "

She looked over her shoulder at his grave face.
"Why try and hide it in that way?"

"It was jest a passing thought," said Mr. Hoop-
driver, airily. "Didn't mean anything, you know."

As they were riding on to Havant it occurred to
Mr. Hoopdriver in a transitory manner that the
interview had been quite other than his expectation.

196 The Wheels of Chance

But that was the way with everything in Mr. Hoop-
driver's experience. And though his Wisdom looked
grave within him, and Caution was chinking coins,
and an ancient prejudice in favour of Property shook
her head, something else was there too, shouting in
his mind to drown all these saner considerations, the
intoxicating thought of riding beside Her all to-day,
all to-morrow, perhaps for other days after that. Of
talking to her familiarly, being brother of all her
slender strength and freshness, of having a golden,
real, and wonderful time beyond all his imaginings.
His old familiar fancyings gave place to anticipa-
tions as impalpable and fluctuating and beautiful as
the sunset of a summer day.

At Havant he took an opportunity to purchase, at
a small hairdresser's in the main street, a toothbrush,
a pair of nail scissors, and a little bottle of stuff to
darken the moustache, an article the shopman intro-
duced to his attention, recommended highly, and
sold in the excitement of the occasion.

THE UNEXPECTED ANECDOTE OF THE
LION

XXIX

THEY rode on to Cosham and lunched lightly but
expensively there. Jessie went out and posted her
letter to her school friend. Then the green height
of Portsdown Hill tempted them, and leaving their
machines in the village they clambered up the slope
to the silent red-brick fort that crowned it. Thence
they had a view of Portsmouth and its cluster of
sister towns, the crowded narrows of the harbour, the
Solent and the Isle of Wight like a blue cloud through
the hot haze. Jessie by some miracle had become a
skirted woman in the Cosham inn. Mr. Hoopdriver
lounged gracefully on the turf, smoked a Red Herring
cigarette, and lazily regarded the fortified towns that
spread like a map away there, the inner line of defence
like toy fortifications, a mile off perhaps ; and beyond
that a few little fields and then the beginnings of
Landport suburb and the smoky cluster of the multi-
tudinous houses. To the right at the head of the
197

198 The Wheels of Chance

harbour shallows the town of Porchester rose among
the trees. Mr. Hoopdriver's anxiety receded to some
remote corner of his brain and that florid half-volun-
tary imagination of his shared the stage with the
image of Jessie. He began to speculate on the
impression he was creating. He took stock of his
suit in a more optimistic spirit, and reviewed, with
some complacency, his actions for the last four and
twenty hours. Then he was dashed at the thought
of her infinite perfections.

She had been observing him quietly, rather more
closely during the last hour or so. She did not look
at him directly because he seemed always looking at
her. Her own troubles had quieted down a little, and
her curiosity about the chivalrous, worshipping, but
singular gentleman in brown, was awakening. She had
recalled, too, the curious incident of their first encoun-
ter. She found him hard to explain to herself. You
must understand that her knowledge of the world was
rather less than nothing, having been obtained en-
tirely from books. You must not take a certain igno-
rance for foolishness.

She had begun with a few experiments. He did
not know French except f sivverplayj a phrase he
seemed to regard as a very good light table joke in
itself. His English was uncertain, but not such as
books informed her distinguished the lower classes.

The Wheels of Chance 199

His manners seemed to her good on the whole, but a
trifle over-respectful and out of fashion. He called
her ' Madam ' once. He seemed a person of means
and leisure, but he knew nothing of recent concerts,
theatres, or books. How did he spend his time?
He was certainly chivalrous, and a trifle simple-
minded. She fancied (so much is there in a change
of costume) that she had never met with such a man
before. What could he be ?

" Mr. Benson," she said, breaking a silence devoted
to landscape.

He rolled over and regarded her, chin on knuckles.

" At your service."

" Do you paint ? Are you an artist ? "

"Well." Judicious pause. "I should hardly call
myself a Nartist, you know. I do paint a little. And
sketch, you know — skitty kind of things."

He plucked and began to nibble a blade of grass.
It was really not so much lying as his quick imagina-
tion that prompted him to add, "In Papers, you
know, and all that."

"I see," said Jessie, looking at him thoughtfully.
Artists were a very heterogeneous class certainly, and
geniuses had a trick of being a little odd. He
avoided her eye and bit his grass. " I don't do much,
you know."

" It's not your profession? "

2OO The Wheels of Chance

" Oh, no," said Hoopdriver, anxious now to hedge.
" I don't make a regular thing of it, you know. Jest
now and then something comes into my head and
down it goes. No — I'm not a regular artist."

"Then you don't practise any regular profession?"
Mr. Hoopdriver looked into her eyes and saw
their quiet unsuspicious regard. He had vague ideas
of resuming the detective rdle. " It's like this," he
said, to gain time. " I have a sort of profession.
Only there's a kind of reason — nothing much, you
know—"

"I beg your pardon for cross-examining you."
"No trouble," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Only I
can't very well — I leave it to you, you know. I
don't want to make any mystery of it, so far as
that goes." Should he plunge boldly and be a bar-
rister? That anyhow was something pretty good.
But she might know about barristry.
" I think I could guess what you are."
" Well — guess," said Mr. Hoopdriver.
" You come from one of the colonies ? '
" Dear me ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, veering round
to the new wind. "How did you find out that?"
(the man was born in a London suburb, dear Reader.)
"I guessed," she said.

He lifted his eyebrows as one astonished, and
clutched a new piece of grass.

The Wheels of Chance 201

"You were educated up country."

" Good again," said Hoopdriver, rolling over again
into her elbow. " You're a clairvoy ant." He bit
at the grass, smiling. " Which colony was it ? "

"That I don't know."

" You must guess," said Hoopdriver.

"South Africa," she said. "I strongly incline to
South Africa."

" South Africa's quite a large place," he said.

"But South Africa is right?"

" You're warm," said Hoopdriver, " anyhow," and
the while his imagination was eagerly exploring this
new province.

"South Africa is right?" she insisted.

He turned over again and nodded, smiling reas-
suringly into her eyes.

"What made me think of South Africa was that
novel of Olive Schreiner's, you know — ' The Story of
an African Farm.' Gregory Rose is so like you."

" I never read ' The Story of an African Farm,' "
said Hoopdriver. " I must. What's he like ? "

"You must read the book. But it's a wonderful
place, with its mixture of races, and its brand-new
civilisation jostling the old savagery. Were you near
Khama?"

" He was a long way off from our place," said
Mr. Hoopdriver. " We had a little ostrich farm,

202 The Wheels of Chance

you know — Just a few hundred of 'em, out Johan-
nesburg way."

"On the Karroo — was it called?" ",^

" That's the term. Some of it was freehold though.
Luckily. We got along very well in the old days.
— But there's no ostriches on that farm now." He
had a diamond mine in his head, just at the mo-
ment, but he stopped and left a little to the girl's
imagination. Besides which it had occurred to him
with a kind of shock that he was lying.

" What became of the ostriches ? "

" We sold 'em off, when we parted with the farm.
Do you mind if I have another cigarette? That
was when I was quite a little chap, you know, that
we had this ostrich farm."

" Did you have Blacks and Boers about you ? "

" Lots," said Mr. Hoopdriver, striking a match on
his instep and beginning to feel hot at the new re-
sponsibility he had brought upon himself.

" How interesting ! Do you know, I've never
been out of England except to Paris and Mentone
and Switzerland."

" One gets tired of travelling (puff) after a bit,
of course."

"You must tell me about your farm in South
Africa. It always stimulates my imagination to think
of these places. I can fancy all the tall ostriches

The Wheels of Chance 203

being driven out by a black herd to — graze, I sup-
pose. How do ostriches feed ? "

"Well," said Hoopdriver. "That's rather various.
They have their fancies, you know. There's fruit,
of course, and that kind of thing. And chicken
food, and so forth. You have to use judgment."

"Did you ever see a lion?"

" They weren't very common in our district," said
Hoopdriver, quite modestly. "But I've seen them,
of course. Once or twice."

" Fancy seeing a lion! Weren't you frightened?"

Mr. Hoopdriver was now thoroughly sorry he had
accepted that offer of South Africa. He puffed his
cigarette and regarded the Solent languidly as he
settled the fate on that lion in his mind. " I scarcely
had time," he said. "It all happened in a minute."

" Go on," she said.

" I was going across the inner paddock where the
fatted ostriches were."

"Did you ^/ostriches, then? I did not know — "

"Eat them! — often. Very nice they are too,
properly stuffed. Well, we — I, rather — was going
across this paddock, and I saw something standing
up in the moonlight and looking at me." Mr. Hoop-
driver was in a hot perspiration now. His inven-
tion seemed to have gone limp. " Luckily I had
my father's gun with me. I was scared, though, I

The Wheels of Chance 205

can tell you. (Puff.) I just aimed at the end that
I thought was the head. And let fly. (Puf.) And
over it went, you know."

"Dead?"

"As dead. It was one of the luckiest shots I ever
fired. And I wasn't much over nine at the time,
neither."

"/ should have screamed and run away."

"There's some things you can't run away from,"
said Mr. Hoopdriver. " To run would have been
Death."

" I don't think I ever met a lion-killer before," she
remarked, evidently with a heightened opinion of
him.

There was a pause. She seemed meditating further
questions. Mr. Hoopdriver drew his watch hastily.
" I say," said Mr. Hoopdriver, showing it to her,
" don't you think we ought to be getting on? "

His face was flushed, his ears bright red. She
ascribed his confusion to modesty. He rose with a
lion added to the burthens of his conscience, and held
out his hand to assist her. They walked down into
Cosham again, resumed their machines, and went on
at a leisurely pace along the northern shore of the big
harbour. But Mr. Hoopdriver was no longer happy.
This horrible, this fulsome lie, stuck in his memory.
Why had he done it ? She did not ask for any more

206 The Wheels of Chance

South African stories, happily — at least until Porches-
ter was reached — but talked instead of Living One's
Own Life, and how custom hung on people like chains.
She talked wonderfully, and set Hoopdriver's mind
fermenting. By the Castle, Mr. Hoopdriver caught
several crabs in little shore pools. At Fareham they
stopped for a second tea, and left the place towards
the hour of sunset, under such invigorating circum-
stances as you shall in due course hear.

THE RESCUE EXPEDITION
XXX

AND now to tell of those energetic chevaliers,
Widgery, Dangle, and Phipps, and of that distressed
beauty, 'Thomas Plantagenet, ' well known in society,
so the paragraphs said, as Mrs. Milton. We left
them at Midhurst station, if I remember rightly,
waiting, in a state of fine emotion, for the Chichester
train. It was clearly understood by the entire Rescue
Party that Mrs. Milton was bearing up bravely
against almost overwhelming grief. The three gen-
tlemen outdid one another in sympathetic expedients;
they watched her gravely — almost tenderly. The
substantial Widgery tugged at his moustache, and
looked his unspeakable feelings at her with those
dog-like, brown eyes of his; the slender Dangle
tugged at his moustache, and did what he could with
unsympathetic grey ones. Phipps, unhappily, had
no moustache to run any risks with, so he folded his
arms and talked in a brave, indifferent, bearing-up
tone about the London, Brighton, and South Coast
207

208 The Wheels of Chance

Railway, just to cheer the poor woman up a little.
And even Mrs. Milton really felt that exalted mel-
ancholy to the very bottom of her heart, and tried
to show it in a dozen little, delicate, feminine ways.

"There is nothing to do until we get to Chiches-
ter," said Dangle. " Nothing."

"Nothing," said Widgery, and aside in her ear:
"You really ate scarcely anything, you know."

"Their trains are always late," said Phipps, with
his fingers along the edge of his collar.

Dangle, you must understand, was a sub-editor
and reviewer, and his pride was to be Thomas Plan-
tagenet's intellectual companion. Widgery, the big
man, was manager of a bank and a mighty golfer,
and his conception of his relations to her never came
into his mind without those charming old lines,
"Douglas, Douglas, tender and true," falling hard
upon its heels. His name was Douglas — Douglas
Widgery. And Phipps, Phipps was a medical stu-
dent still, and he felt that he laid his heart at her
feet, the heart of a man of the world. She was kind
to them all in her way, and insisted on their being
friends together, in spite of a disposition to recip-
rocal criticism they displayed. Dangle thought
Widgery a Philistine, appreciating but coarsely the
merits of "A Soul Untrammelled," and Widgery
thought Dangle lacked humanity — would talk insin-

The Wheels of Chance 209

cerely to say a clever thing. Both Dangle and
Widgery thought Phipps a bit of a cub, and Phipps
thought both Dangle and Widgery a couple of
Thundering Bounders.

" They would have got to Chichester in time for
lunch," said Dangle, in the train. "After, perhaps.
And there's no sufficient place in the road. So soon
as we get there, Phipps must inquire at the chief
hotels to see if any one answering to her description
has lunched there."

"Oh, fit inquire," said Phipps. "Willingly. I
suppose you and Widgery will just hang about — "

He saw an expression of pain on Mrs. Milton's
gentle face, and stopped abruptly.

"No," said Dangle, "we shan't hang about, as you
put it. There are two places in Chichester where
tourists might go — the cathedral and a remarkably
fine museum. I shall go to the cathedral and make
an inquiry or so, while Widgery — "

"The museum. Very well. And after that there's
a little thing or two I've thought of myself," said
Widgery.

To begin with they took Mrs. Milton in a kind
of procession to the Red Hotel and established her
there with some tea. "You are so kind to me," she
said. "All of you." They signified that it was
nothing, and dispersed to their inquiries. By six

2io The Wheels of Chance

they returned, their zeal a little damped, without news.
Widgery came back with Dangle. Phipps was the
last to return. "You're quite sure," said Widgery,
"that there isn't any flaw in that inference of yours?"

"Quite," said Dangle, rather shortly.

"Of course," said Widgery, "their starting from
Midhurst on the Chichester road doesn't absolutely
bind them not to change their minds."

" My dear fellow ! It does. Really it does. You
must allow me to have enough intelligence to think
of cross-roads. Really you must. There aren't any
cross-roads to tempt them. Would they turn aside
here? No. Would they turn there? Many more
things are inevitable than you fancy."

"We shall see at once," said Widgery, at the win-
dow. "Here comes Phipps. For my own part — "

"Phipps!" said Mrs. Milton. "Is he hurrying?
Does he look — " She rose in her eagerness, biting
her trembling lip, and went towards the window.

"No news," said Phipps, entering.

"Ah!" said Widgery.

"None?" said Dangle.

"Well," said Phipps. "One fellow had got hold
of a queer story of a man in bicycling clothes, who
was asking the same question about this time yester-
day."

" What question ? " said Mrs. Milton, in the

The Wheels of Chance 211

shadow of the window. She spoke in a low voice,
almost a whisper.

"Why — Have you seen a young lady in a grey
bicycling costume? "

Dangle caught at his lower lip. "What's that?"
he said. "Yesterday! A man asking after her
then ! What can that mean ? "

"Heaven knows," said Phipps, sitting down
wearily. "You'd better infer."

"What kind of man? " said Dangle.

"How should I know? — in bicycling costume,
the fellow said."

"But what height? — What complexion?"

"Didn't ask," said Phipps.

" Didn't ask! Nonsense," said Dangle.

"Ask him yourself," said Phipps. "He's an
ostler chap in the White Hart, — short, thick-set
fellow, with a red face and a crusty manner. Lean-
ing up against the stable door. Smells of whiskey.
Go and ask him."

" Of course," said Dangle, taking his straw hat from
the shade over the stuffed bird on the chiffonier and
turning towards the door. "I might have known."

Phipps' mouth opened and shut.

"You're tired, I'm sure, Mr. Phipps," said the
lady, soothingly. "Let me ring for some tea for
you." It suddenly occurred to Phipps that he had

212 The Wheels of Chance

lapsed a little from his chivalry. "I was a little
annoyed at the way he rushed me to do all this
business," he said. "But I'd do a hundred times
as much if it would bring you any nearer to her."
Pause. " I would like a little tea."

"I don't want to raise any false hopes," said
Widgery. "But I do not believe they even came
to Chichester. Bangle's a very clever fellow, of
course, but sometimes these Inferences of his — "

"Tchak!" said Phipps, suddenly.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Milton.

" Something I've forgotten. I went right out from
here, went to every other hotel in the place, and
never thought — But never mind. I'll ask when
the waiter comes."

" You don't mean — "

A tap, and the door opened. "Tea, m'm? yes,
m'm," said the waiter.

"One minute," said Phipps. "Was a lady in
grey, a cycling lady — "

"Stopped here yesterday? Yessir. Stopped the
night. With her brother, sir — a young gent."

" Brother ! " said Mrs. Milton, in a low tone.
"Thank God!"

The waiter glanced at her and understood every-
thing. "A young gent, sir," he said, "very free
with his money. Give the name of Beaumont."

The Wfoels of Chance 213

He proceeded to some rambling particulars, and was
cross-examined by Widgery on the plans of the
young couple.

"Havant! Where's Havant?" said Phipps. "I
seem to remember it somewhere."

"Was the man tall?" said Mrs. Milton, intently,
"distinguished looking? with a long, flaxen mous-
tache? and spoke with a drawl?"

"Well," said the waiter, and thought. "His
moustache, m'm, was scarcely long — scrubby more,
and young looking."

"About thirty-five, he was?"

"No, m'm. More like five and twenty. Not
that."

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Milton, speaking in a
curious, hollow voice, fumbling for her salts, and
showing the finest self-control. " It must have been
her younger brother — must have been."

"That will do, thank you," said Widgery, offi-
ciously, feeling that she would be 'easier under this
new surprise if the man were dismissed. The waiter
turned to go, and almost collided with Dangle, who
was entering the room, panting excitedly and with a
pocket handkerchief held to his right eye. " Hullo ! "
said Dangle. "What's up? "

"What's up \f\\hyou ? " said Phipps.

" Nothing — an altercation merely with that

214

The Wheels of Chance 215

drunken ostler of yours. He thought it was a plot
to annoy him — that the Young Lady in Grey was
mythical. Judged from your manner. I've ... c a
piece of raw meat to keep over it. You ha\ ^me
news, I see?"

" Did the man hit you?" asked Widgery.

Mrs. Milton rose and approached Dangle. " Can-
not I do anything?"

Dangle was heroic. "Only tell me your news,"
he said, round the corner of the handkerchief.

" It was in this way," said Phipps, and explained
rather sheepishly. While he was doing so, with a
running fire of commentary from Widgery, the waiter
brought in a tray of tea. " A time table," said Dan-
gle, promptly, "for Havant." Mrs. Milton poured
two cups, and Phipps and Dangle partook in passover
form. They caught the train by a hair's breadth.
So to Havant and inquiries.

Dangle was puffed up to find that his guess of
Havant was right. In view of the fact that beyond
Havant the Southampton road has a steep hill con-
tinuously on the right-hand side, and the sea on the
left, he hit upon a magnificent scheme for heading
the young folks off. He and Mrs. Milton would
go to Fareham, Widgery and Phipps should alight
one each at the intermediate stations of Cosham and
Porchester, and come on by the next train if they

216 The Wheels of Chance

had no news. If they did not come on, a wire to
the Fareham post office was to explain why. It was
Napoleonic, and more than consoled Dangle for the
open derision of the Havant street boys at the hand-
kerchief which still protected his damaged eye.

Moreover, the scheme answered to perfection.
The fugitives escaped by a hair's breadth. They
were outside the Golden Anchor at Fareham, and
preparing to mount, as Mrs. Milton and Dangle
came round the corner from the station. " It's
her ! " said Mrs. Milton, and would have screamed.
"Hist!" said Dangle, gripping the lady's arm,
removing his handkerchief in his excitement, and
leaving the piece of meat over his eye, an extraor-
dinary appearance which seemed unexpectedly to
calm her. " Be cool ! " said Dangle, glaring under the
meat. " They must not see us. They will get away
else. Were there flys at the station?" The young
couple mounted and vanished round the corner of
the Winchester road. Had it not been for the
publicity of the business, Mrs. Milton would have
fainted. " Save her ! " she said.

"Ah! A conveyance," said Dangle. "One
minute."

He left her in a most pathetic attitude, with
her hand pressed to her heart, and rushed into
the Golden Anchor. Dog cart in ten minutes.

The Wheels of Chance 217

Emerged. The meat had gone now, and one saw
the cooling puffiness over his eye. " I will conduct
you back to the station," said Dangle; "hurry back
here, and pursue them. You will meet Widgery
and Phipps and tell them I am in pursuit."

She was whirled back to the railway station and
left there, on a hard, blistered, wooden seat in the
sun. She felt tired and dreadfully ruffled and
agitated and dusty. Dangle was, no doubt, most
energetic and devoted ; but for a kindly, helpful
manner commend her to Douglas Widgery.

Meanwhile Dangle, his face golden in the evening
sun, was driving (as well as he could) a large, black
horse harnessed into a thing called a gig, north-
westward towards Winchester. Dangle, barring his
swollen eye, was a refined-looking little man, and
he wore a deerstalker cap and was dressed in dark
grey. His neck was long and slender. Perhaps you
know what gigs are, — huge, big, wooden things and
very high ; and the horse, too, was huge and big and
high, with knobby legs, a long face, a hard mouth,
and a whacking trick of pacing. Smack, smack,
smack, smack it went along the road, and hard by
the church it shied vigorously at a hooded per-
ambulator.

The history of the Rescue Expedition now
becomes confused. It appears that Widgery was

2i8 The Wheels of Chance

extremely indignant to find Mrs. Milton left about
upon the Fareham platform. The day had irritated
him somehow, though he had started with the noblest
intentions, and he seemed glad to find an outlet for
justifiable indignation. "He's such a spasmodic
creature," said Widgery. "Rushing off! And I
suppose we're to wait here until he comes back !
It's likely. He's so egotistical, is Dangle. Always
wants to mismanage everything himself."

" He means to help me," said Mrs. Milton, a little
reproachfully, touching his arm.

Widgery was hardly in the mood to be mollified
all at once. "He need not prevent me," he said,
and stopped. "It's no good talking, you know, and
you are tired."

"I can go on," she said brightly; "if only we
find* her."

"While I was cooling my heels in Cosham I
bought a county map." He produced and opened
it. "Here, you see, is the road out of Fareham."
He proceeded with the calm deliberation of a busi-
ness man to develop a proposal of taking train
forthwith to Winchester. " They must be going to
Winchester," he explained. It was inevitable.
To-morrow Sunday, Winchester a cathedral town,
road going nowhere else of the slightest importance.

"But Mr. Dangle?"

The Wheels of Chance 219

" He will simply go on until he has to pass some-
thing, and then he will break his neck. I have seen
Dangle drive before. It's scarcely likely a dog-cart,
especially a hired dog-cart, will overtake bicycles in
the cool of the evening. Rely upon me, Mrs. Mil-
ton— "

"I am in your hands," she said, with pathetic
littleness, looking up at him, and for the moment he
forgot the exasperation of the day.

Phipps, during this conversation, had stood in a
somewhat depressed attitude, leaning on his stick,
feeling his collar, and looking from one speaker
to the other. The idea of leaving Dangle behind
seemed to him an excellent one. "We might leave
a message at the place where he got the dog-cart,"
he suggested, when he saw their eyes meeting.
There was a cheerful alacrity about all three at the
proposal.

But they never got beyond Botley. For even as
their train ran into the station, a mighty rumbling
was heard, there was a shouting overhead, the guard
stood astonished on the platform, and Phipps, thrust-
ing his head out of the window, cried, "There he
goes!" and sprang out of the carriage. Mrs. Mil-
ton, following in alarm, just saw it. From Widgery
it was hidden. Botley station lies in a cutting, over-
head was the roadway, and across the lemon yellows

The Wheels of Chance 221

and flushed pinks of the sunset, there whirled a great
black mass, a horse like a long-nosed chess knight,
the upper works of a gig, and Dangle in transit from
front to back. A monstrous shadow aped him across
the cutting. It was the event of a second. Dangle
seemed to jump, hang in the air momentarily, and
vanish, and after a moment's pause came a heart-
rending smash. Then two black heads running
swiftly.

"Better get out," said Phipps to Mrs. Milton,
who stood fascinated in the doorway.

In another moment all three were hurrying up the
steps. They found Dangle, hatless, standing up
with cut hands extended, having his hands brushed
by an officious small boy. A broad, ugly road ran
downhill in a long vista, and in the distance was a
little group of Botley inhabitants holding the big,
black horse. Even at that distance they could see
the expression of conscious pride on the monster's
visage. It was as wooden-faced a horse as you can
imagine. The beasts in the Tower of London, on
which the men in armour are perched, are the only
horses I have ever seen at all like it. However, we
are not concerned now with the horse, but with
Dangle. "Hurt?" asked Phipps, eagerly, leading.

" Mr. Dangle ! " cried Mrs. Milton, clasping her
hands.

222 The Wheels of Chance

"Hullo!" said Dangle, not surprised in the
slightest. " Glad you've come. I may want you.
Bit of a mess I'm in — eigh ? But I've caught 'em.
At the very place I expected, too."

"Caught them!" said Widgery. "Where are
they?"

"Up there," he said, with a backward motion of
his head. "About a mile up the hill. I left 'em.
I had to."

" I don't understand," said Mrs. Milton, with that
rapt, painful look again. " Have you found Jessie? "

" I have. I wish I could wash the gravel out of
my hands somewhere. It was like this, you know.
Came on them suddenly round a corner. Horse
shied at the bicycles. They were sitting by the
roadside botanising flowers. I just had time to
shout, ' Jessie Milton, we've been looking for you,'
and then that confounded brute bolted. I didn't
dare turn round. I had all my work to do to save
myself being turned over, as it was — so long as I
did, I mean. I just shouted, ' Return to your friends.
All will be forgiven.' And off I came, clatter, clatter.
Whether they heard — "

" Take me to her" said Mrs. Milton, with intensity,
turning towards Widgery.

"Certainly," said Widgery, suddenly becoming
active. "How far is it, Dangle?"

The Wheels of Chance 223

"Mile and a half or two miles. I was deter-
mined to find them, you know. I say though —
Look at my hands! But I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Milton." He turned to Phipps. "Phipps, I say,
where shall I wash the gravel out? And have a look
at my knee?"

"There's the station," said Phipps, becoming
helpful. Dangle made a step, and a damaged knee
became evident. "Take my arm," said Phipps.

"Where can we get a conveyance?" asked Wid-
gery of two small boys.

The two small boys failed to understand. They
looked at one another.

"There's not a cab, not a go-cart, in sight," said
Widgery. "It's a case of a horse, a horse, my king-
dom for a horse."

"There's a harse all right," said one of the small
boys with a movement of the head.

"Don't you know where we can hire traps?"
asked Widgery.

"Or a cart or — anything? " asked Mrs. Milton.

"John Ooker's gart a cart, but no one can't
'ire'n," said the larger of the small boys, partially
averting his face and staring down the road and
making a song of it. "And so's my feyther, for's
leg us broke."

" Not a cart even ! Evidently. What shall we do ? "

224 The Wheels of Chance

It occurred to Mrs. Milton that if Widgery .was
the man for courtly devotion, Dangle was infin-
itely readier of resource. "I suppose — " she
said, timidly. "Perhaps if you were to ask Mr.
Dangle — "

And then all the gilt came off Widgery. He
answered quite rudely. " Confound Dangle ! Hasn't
he messed us up enough? He must needs drive
after them in a trap to tell them we're coming, and
now you want me to ask him — "

Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with tears. He
stopped abruptly. "I'll go and ask Dangle," he
said, shortly. "If you wish it." And went striding
into the station and down the steps, leaving her in
the road under the quiet inspection of the two little
boys, and with a kind of ballad refrain running
through her head, "Where are the Knights of the
Olden Time?" and feeling tired to death and
hungry and dusty and out of curl, and, in short, a
martyr woman.

XXXI

IT goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day,
how the fugitives vanished into Immensity; how
there were no more trains ; how Botley stared unsym-
pathetically with a palpable disposition to derision,
denying conveyances; how the landlord of the Heron
was suspicious, how the next day was Sunday, and
the hot summer's day had crumpled the collar of
Phipps and stained the skirts of Mrs. Milton, and
dimmed the radiant emotions of the whole party.
Dangle, with sticking-plaster and a black eye, felt
the absurdity of the pose of the Wounded Knight,
and abandoned it after the faintest efforts. Re-
criminations never, perhaps, held the foreground of
the talk, but they played like summer lightning on
the edge of the conversation. And deep in the
hearts of all was a galling sense of the ridiculous.
Jessie, they thought, was most to blame. Appar-
ently, too, the worst, which would have made the
whole business tragic, was not happening. Here
was a young woman — young woman do I say ? a
mere girl! — had chosen to leave a comfortable
225

226 The Wheels of Chance

home in Surbiton, and all the delights of a refined
and intellectual circle, and had rushed off, trailing
us after her, posing hard, mutually jealous, and now
tired and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere
mud from her wheel, into this detestable village
beer-house on a Saturday night ! And she had done
it, not for Love and Passion, which are serious
excuses one may recognise even if one must repro-
bate, but just for a Freak, just for a fantastic Idea ;
for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of Common
Sense. Yet withal, such was our restraint, that we
talked of her still as one much misguided, as one
who burthened us with anxiety, as a lamb astray, and
Mrs. Milton having eaten, continued to show the
finest feelings on the matter.

She sat, I may mention, in the cushioned basket-
chair, the only comfortable chair in the room, and
we sat on incredibly hard, horsehair things having
antimacassars tied to their backs by means of lemon-
coloured bows. It was different from those dear
old talks at Surbiton, somehow. She sat facing the
window, which was open (the night was so tranquil
and warm), and the dim light — for we did not use
the lamp — suited her admirably. She talked in a
voice that told you she was tired, and she seemed
inclined to state a case against herself in the matter
of "A Soul Untrammelled." It was such an evening

The Wheels of Chance 227

as might live in a sympathetic memoir, but it was a
little dull while it lasted.

"I feel," she said, "that I am to blame. I have
Developed. That first book of mine — I do not
go back upon a word of it, mind, but it has been
misunderstood, misapplied."

"It has," said Widgery, trying to look so deeply
sympathetic as to be visible in the dark. "Delib-
erately misunderstood."

"Don't say that," said the lady. "Not deliber-
ately. I try and think that critics are honest. After
their lights. I was not thinking of critics. But she,
I mean — " She paused, an interrogation.

"It is possible," said Dangle, scrutinising his
sticking-plaster.

" I write a book and state a case. I want people
to think as I recommend, not to do as I recom-
mend. It is just Teaching. Only I make it into a
story. I want to Teach new Ideas, new Lessons, to
promulgate Ideas. Then when the Ideas have been
spread abroad — Things will come about. Only
now it is madness to fly in the face of the established
order. Bernard Shaw, you know, has explained that
with regard to Socialism. We all know that to earn
all you consume is right, and that living on invested
capital is wrong. Only we cannot begin while we
are so few. It is Those Others."

7

228 The Wheels of Chance

"Precisely," said Widgery. "It is Those Others.
They must begin first."

"And meanwhile you go on banking — "

"If I didn't, some one else would."

"And I live on Mr. Milton's Lotion while I try
to gain a footing in Literature."

"Try/" said Phipps. "You have done so."
And, "That's different," said Dangle, at the same
time.

"You are so kind to me. But in this matter. Of
course Georgina Griffiths in my book lived alone in
a flat in Paris and went to life classes and had men
visitors, but then she was over twenty-one."

"Jessica is only seventeen, and girlish for that,"
said Dangle.

" It alters everything. That child ! It is different
with a woman. And Georgina Griffiths never flaunted
her freedom — on a bicycle, in country places. In
this country. Where every one is so particular.
Fancy, sleeping away from home. It's dreadful —
If it gets about it spells ruin for her."

"Ruin," said Widgery.

"No man would marry a girl like that," said
Phipps.

"It must be hushed up," said Dangle.

"It always seems to me that life is made up of
individuals, of individual cases. We must weigh

The Wheels of Chance 229

each person against his or her circumstances. Gen-
eral rules don't apply — "

"I often feel the force of that," said Widgery.

"Those are my rules. Of course my books — "

"It's different, altogether different," said Dangle.
"A novel deals with typical cases."

"And life is not typical," said Widgery, with
immense profundity.

Then suddenly, unintentionally, being himself
most surprised and shocked of any in the room,
Phipps yawned. The failing was infectious, and
the gathering having, as you can easily understand,
talked itself weary, dispersed on trivial pretences.
But not to sleep immediately. Directly Dangle was
alone he began, with infinite disgust, to scrutinise
his darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little
man in spite of his energy. The whole business —
so near a capture — was horribly vexatious. Phipps
sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal
disgust, a collar he would have thought incredible
for Sunday twenty- four hours before. Mrs. Milton
fell a-musing on the mortality of even big, fat men
with dog-like eyes, and Widgery was unhappy because
he had been so cross to her at the station, and be-
cause so far he did not feel that he had scored over
Dangle. Also he was angry with Dangle. And all
four of them, being souls living very much upon the

230 The Wheels of Chance

appearances of things, had a painful, mental middle
distance of Botley derisive and suspicious, and a
remoter background of London humorous, and Sur-
biton speculative. Were they really, after all,
behaving absurdly?

MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT
XXXII

As Mr. Dangle had witnessed, the fugitives had
been left by him by the side of the road about two
miles from Botley. Before Mr. Bangle's appear-
ance, Mr. Hoopdriver had been learning with great
interest that mere roadside flowers had names, —
star-flowers, wind-stars, St. John's wort, willow herb,
lords and ladies, bachelor's buttons, — most curious
names, some of them. "The flowers are all differ-
ent in South Africa, y'know," he was explaining
with a happy fluke of his imagination to account
for his ignorance. Then suddenly, heralded by clat-
tering sounds and a gride of wheels, Dangle had
flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the
summer evening ; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating
behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie
by her name, had backed towards the hedge for no
ostensible reason, and vanished to the accomplish-
ment of the Fate that had been written down for
him from the very beginning of things. Jessie and
Hoopdriver had scarcely time to stand up and seize
231

232

The Wheels of Chance 233

their machines, before this tumultuous, this swift and
wonderful passing of Dangle was achieved. He went
from side to side of the road, — worse even than the
riding forth of Mr. Hoopdriver it was, — and van-
ished round the corner.

"He knew my name," said Jessie. "Yes — it was
Mr. Dangle."

" That was our bicycles did that," said Mr. Hoop-
driver simultaneously, and speaking with a certain
complacent concern. " I hope he won't get hurt."

"That was Mr. Dangle," repeated Jessie, and
Mr. Hoopdriver heard this time, with a violent
start. His eyebrows went up spasmodically.

" What ! someone you know ? "

"Yes."

" Lord ! "

" He was looking for me," said Jessie. " I could
see. He began to call to me before the horse
shied. My stepmother has sent him."

Mr. Hoopdriver wished he had returned the bi-
cycle after all, for his ideas were still a little hazy
about Bechamel and Mrs. Milton. Honesty is the
best policy — often, he thought. He turned his head
this way and that. He became active. "After us,
eigh? Then he'll come back. He's gone down
that hill, and he won't be able to pull up for a
bit, I'm certain."

234 The Wheels of Chance

Jessie, he saw, had wheeled her machine into the
road and was mounting. Still staring at the corner
that had swallowed up Dangle, Hoopdriver followed
suit. And so, just as the sun was setting, they
began another flight together, — riding now towards
Bishops Waltham, with Mr. Hoopdriver in the post
of danger — the rear — ever and again looking over
his shoulder and swerving dangerously as he did
so. Occasionally Jessie had to slacken her pace.
He breathed heavily, and hated himself because
his mouth fell open. After nearly an hour's hard
riding, they found themselves uncaught at Win-
chester. Not a trace of Dangle nor any other
danger was visible as they rode into the dusky,
yellow-lit street. Though the bats had been flutter-
ing behind the hedges and the evening star was
bright while they were still two miles from Win-
chester, Mr. Hoopdriver pointed out the dangers
of stopping in such an obvious abiding-place, and
gently but firmly insisted upon replenishing the
lamps and riding on towards Salisbury. From Win-
chester, roads branch in every direction, and to
turn abruptly westward was clearly the way to throw
off the chase. As Hoopdriver saw the moon rising
broad and yellow through the twilight, he thought
he should revive the effect of that ride out of Bog-
nor; but somehow, albeit the moon and all the

The Wheels of Chance 235

atmospheric effects were the same, the emotions
were different. They rode in absolute silence, and
slowly after they had cleared the outskirts of Win-
chester. Both of them were now nearly tired out,
— the level was tedious, and even a little hill a
burden ; and so it came about that in the hamlet
of Wallenstock they were beguiled to stop and ask
for accommodation in an exceptionally prosperous-
looking village inn. A plausible landlady rose to
the occasion.

Now, as they passed into the room where their
suppers were prepared, Mr. Hoopdriver caught a
glimpse through a door ajar and floating in a reek
of smoke, of three and a half faces — for the edge
of the door cut one down — and an American cloth-
covered table with several glasses and a tankard.
And he also heard a remark. In the second before
he heard that remark, Mr. Hoopdriver had been
a proud and happy man, — to particularize, a baro-
net's heir incognito. He had surrendered their bi-
cycles to the odd man of the place with infinite
easy dignity, and had bowingly opened the door
for Jessie. "Who's that, then?" he imagined peo-
ple saying; and then, " Some'n pretty well orf —
judge by the bicycles." Then the imaginary spec-
tators would fall a-talking of the fashionableness
of bicycling, — how judges and stockbrokers and

236 The Wheels of Chance

actresses and, in fact, all the best people rode, —
and how that it was often the fancy of such great
folk to shun the big hotels, the adulation of urban
crowds, and seek, incognito, the cosy quaintnesses
of village life. Then, maybe, they would think of
a certain nameless air of distinction about the lady
who had stepped across the doorway, and about
the handsome, flaxen-moustached, blue-eyed Cava-
lier who had followed her in, and they would look
one to another. "Tell you what it is," one of
the village elders would say — just as they do in
novels — voicing the thought of all, in a low, im-
pressive tone : " There's such a thing as entertain-
ing barranets unawares — not to mention no higher
things — "

Such, I say, had been the filmy, delightful stuff
in Mr. Hoopdriver's head the moment before he
heard that remark. But the remark toppled him
headlong. What the precise remark was need not
concern us. It was a casual piece of such satire
as Strephon delights in. Should you be curious,
dear lady, as to its nature, you have merely to
dress yourself in a really modern cycling costume,
get one of the feeblest-looking of your men to es-
cort you, and ride out, next Saturday evening, to any
public house where healthy, homely people gather
together. Then you will hear quite a lot of the

The Wheels of Chance 237

kind of thing Mr. Hoopdriver heard. More, pos-
sibly, than you will desire.

The remark, I must add, implicated Mr. Hoop-
driver. It indicated an entire disbelief in his social
standing. At a blow, it shattered all the gorgeous
imaginative fabric his mind had been rejoicing in.
All that foolish happiness vanished like a dream.
And there was nothing to show for it, as there is
nothing to show for any spiteful remark that has
ever been made. Perhaps the man who said the
thing had a gleam of satisfaction at the idea of
taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg, but
it is just as possible he did not know at the time
that his stray shot had hit. He had thrown it as
a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it not only
demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded.
It touched Jessie grossly.

She did not hear it, he concluded from her sub-
sequent bearing; but during the supper they had
in the little private dining-room, though she talked
cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of indistinct
conversation, and now and then laughter, came in
from the inn parlour through the pelargoniums in the
open window. Hoopdriver felt it must all be in
the same strain, — at her expense and his. He an-
swered her abstractedly. She was tired, she said,
and presently went to her room. Mr. Hoopdriver,

238 The Wheels of Chance

in his courtly way, opened the door for her and
bowed her out. He stood listening and fearing
some new offence as she went upstairs, and round
the bend where the barometer hung beneath the
stuffed birds. Then he went back to the room, and
stood on the hearthrug before the paper fireplace
ornament. " Cads ! " he said in a scathing under-
tone, as a fresh burst of laughter came floating in.
All through supper he had been composing stinging
repartee, a blistering speech of denunciation to be
presently delivered. He would rate them as a noble-
man should : " Call themselves Englishmen, indeed,
and insult a woman ! " he would say ; take the names
and addresses perhaps, threaten to speak to the Lord
of the Manor, promise to let them hear from him
again, and so out with consternation in his wake.
It really ought to be done.

" Teach 'em better," he said fiercely, and tweaked
his moustache painfully. What was it ? He revived
the objectionable remark for his own exasperation;
and then went over the heads of his speech again.

He coughed, made three steps towards the door,
then stopped and went back to the hearthrug. He
wouldn't — after all. Yet was he not a Knight Er-
rant? Should such men go unreproved, unchecked,
by wandering baronets incognito? Magnanimity?
Look at ?t in that way? Churls beneath one's

The Wheels of Chance 239

notice? No; merely a cowardly subterfuge. He
would — after all.

Something within him protested that he was a
hot-headed ass even as he went towards the door
again. But he only went on the more resolutely.
He crossed the hall, by the bar, and entered the
room from which the remark had .proceeded. He
opened the door abruptly and stood scowling on
them in the doorway. "You'll only make a mess
of it," remarked the internal sceptic. There were
five men in the room altogether : a fat person, with
a long pipe and a great number of -chins, in an arm-
chair by the fireplace, who wished Mr. Hoopdriver
a good evening very affably ; a young fellow smok-
ing a cutty and displaying crossed legs with gaiters ;
a little, bearded man with a toothless laugh ; a mid-
dle-aged, comfortable man with bright eyes, who
wore a velveteen jacket ; and a fair young man,
very genteel in a yellowish- brown ready-made suit
and a white tie.

" H'm," said Mr. Hoopdriver, looking very stern
and harsh. And then in a forbidding tone, as one
who consented to no liberties, " Good evening."

"Very pleasant day we've been 'aving," said the
fair young man with the white tie.

"Very," said Mr. Hoopdriver, slowly ; and taking
a brown armchair, he planted it with great delibera-

240 The Wheels of Chance

tion where he faced the fireplace, and sat down.
Let's see — how did that speech begin?

"Very pleasant roads about here," said the fair
young man with the white tie.

"Very," said Mr. Hoopdriver, eyeing him darkly.
Have to begin somehow. "The roads about here are
all right, and the. weather about here is all right, but
what I've come in here to say is — there's some -damned
unpleasant people — damned unpleasant people ! "

" Oh ! " said the young man with the gaiters,
apparently making a mental inventory of his pearl
buttons as he spoke. "How's that?"

Mr. Hoopdriver put his hands on his knees and
stuck out his elbows with extreme angularity. In
his heart he was raving at his idiotic folly at thus
bearding these lions, — indisputably, they were lions,
— but he had to go through with it now. Heaven
send, his breath, which was already getting a trifle
spasmodic, did not suddenly give out. He fixed
his eye on the face of the fat man with the chins,
and spoke in a low, impressive voice. "I came
here, sir," said Mr. Hoopdriver, and paused to in-
flate his cheeks, "with a lady."

"Very nice lady," said the man with the gaiters,
putting his head on one side to admire a pearl but-
ton that had been hiding behind the curvature of his
calf. " Very nice lady indeed."

The Wheels of Chance 241

" I came here," said Mr. Hoopdriver, " with a
lady."

"We saw you did, bless you," said the fat man
with the chins, in a curious wheezy voice. " I don't
see there's anything so very extraordinary in that.
One 'ud think we hadn't eyes."

Mr. Hoopdriver coughed. " I came here, sir — "

"We've 'card that," said the little man with the
beard, sharply and went off into an amiable chuckle.
" We know it by 'art," said the little man, elaborat-
ing the point.

Mr. Hoopdriver temporarily lost his thread. He
glared malignantly at the little man with the beard,
and tried to recover his discourse. A pause.

" You were saying," said the fair young man with
the white tie, speaking very politely, " that you came
here with a lady."

" A lady," meditated the gaiter gazer.

The man in velveteen, who was looking from one
speaker to another with keen, bright eyes, now
laughed as though a point had been scored, and
stimulated Mr. Hoopdriver to speak, by fixing him
with an expectant regard.

" Some dirty cad," said Mr. Hoopdriver, proceed-
ing with his discourse, and suddenly growing ex-
tremely fierce, " made a remark as we went by this
door."

A

___-r . '«3^e=, ( __ i

242

The Wheels of Chance 243

" Steady on ! " said the old gentleman with many
chins. " Steady on ! Don't you go a-calling us
names, please."

" One minute ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " It wasn't
I began calling names." ("Who did?" said the
man with the chins.) " I'm not calling any of you
dirty cads. Don't run away with that impression.
Only some person in this room made a remark that
showed he wasn't fit to wipe boots on, and, with
all due deference to such gentlemen as are gentle-
men"(Mr. Hoopdriver looked round for moral sup-
port), "I want to know which it was."

" Meanin' ? " said the fair young man in the white
tie.

"That I'm going to wipe my boots on 'im straight
away," said Mr. Hoopdriver, reverting to anger, if
with a slight catch in his throat — than which threat
of personal violence nothing had been further from
his thoughts on entering the room. He said this
because he could think of nothing else to say, and
stuck out his elbows truculently to hide the sinking
of his heart. It is curious how situations run away
with us.

" 'Ullo, Charlie ! " said the little man, and " My
eye ! " said the owner of the chins. " You're going
to wipe your boots on Jim?" said the fair young
man, in a tone of mild surprise.

244 The Wheels of Chance

" I am," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with emphatic reso-
lution, and glared in the young man's face.

"That's fair and reasonable," said the man in the
velveteen jacket ; " if you can."

The interest of the meeting seemed transferred to
the young man in the white tie. " Of course, if you
can't find out which it is, I suppose you're prepared
to wipe your boots in a liberal way on everybody
in the room," said this young man, in the same
tone of impersonal question. " This gentleman, the
champion lightweight — "

" Own up, Charlie," said the young man with the
gaiters, looking up for a moment. "And don't go
a-dragging in your betters. It's fair and square.
You can't get out of it."

" Was it this — gent ? " began Mr. Hoopdriver.

"Of course," said the young man in the white
tie, " when it comes to talking of wiping boots — "

" I'm not talking ; I'm going to do it," said Mr.
Hoopdriver.

He looked round at the meeting. They were no
longer antagonists ; they were spectators. He would
have to go through with it now. But this tone of
personal aggression on the maker of the remark
had somehow got rid of the oppressive feeling of
Hoopdriver contra mundum. Apparently, he would
have to fight someone. Would he get a black eye ?

The Wheels of Chance 245

Would he get very much hurt? Pray goodness it
wasn't that sturdy chap in the gaiters ! Should he
rise and begin ? What would she think' if he brought
a black eye to breakfast to-morrow? "Is this the
man?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a business-like
calm, and arms more angular than ever.

" Eat 'im ! " said the little man with the beard ;
"eat 'im straight orf."

" Steady on ! " said the young man in the white
tie. "Steady on a minute. If I did happen to
say — "

"You did, did you?" said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" Backing out of it, Charlie ? " said the young
man with the gaiters.

" Not a bit," said Charlie. " Surely we can pass
a bit of a joke — "

" I'm going to teach you to keep your jokes to
yourself," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" Bray-vo ! " said the shepherd of the flock of
chins.

" Charlie is a bit too free with his jokes," said the
little man with the beard.

" It's downright disgusting," said Hoopdriver, fall-
ing back upon his speech. "A lady can't ride a
bicycle in a country road, or wear a dress a little
out of the ordinary, but every dirty little greaser
must needs go shouting insults — "

246 The Wheels of Chance

"/ didn't know the young lady would hear
what I said," said Charlie. " Surely one can speak
friendly to one's friends. How was I to know the
door was open — "

Hoopdriver began to suspect that his antagonist
was, if possible, more seriously alarmed at the pros-
pect of violence than himself, and his spirits rose
again. These chaps ought to have a thorough les-
son. " Of course you knew the door was open,"
he retorted indignantly. "Of course you thought
we should hear what you said. Don't go telling lies
about it. It's no good your saying things like that.
You've had your fun, and you meant to have your
fun. And I mean to make an example of you,
Sir."

" Ginger beer," said the little man with the beard,
in a confidential tone to the velveteen jacket, "is
regular up this 'ot weather. Bustin' its bottles it is
everywhere."

" What's the good of scrapping about in a public-
house?" said Charlie, appealing to the company.
"A fair fight without interruptions, now, I wouldn't
mind, if the gentleman's so disposed."

Evidently the man was horribly afraid. Mr. Hoop-
driver grew truculent.

"Where you like," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Jest
wherever you like."

The Wheels of Chance 247

" You insulted the gent," said the man in velveteen.

"Don't be a bloomin' funk, Charlie," said the
man in gaiters. "Why, you got a stone of him, if
you got an ounce."

" What I say, is this," said the gentleman with
the excessive chins, trying to get a hearing by
banging his chair arms. " If Charlie goes saying
things, he ought to back 'em up. That's what I
say. I don't mind his sayin' such things 't all, but
he ought to be prepared to back 'em up."

"I'll back 'em up all right," said Charlie, with
extremely bitter emphasis on ' back.' " If the gen-
tleman likes to come Toosday week — "

" Rot ! " chopped in Hoopdriver. " Now."

"'Ear, 'ear," said the owner of the chins.

" Never put off till to-morrow, Charlie, what you
can do to-day," said the man in the velveteen coat.

"You got to do it, Charlie," said the man in
gaiters. "It's no good."

"It's like this," said Charlie, appealing to every-
one except Hoopdriver. " Here's me, got to take in
her ladyship's dinner to-morrow night. How should
I look with a black eye ? And going round with the
carriage with a split lip ? "

" If you don't want your face sp'iled, Charlie, why
don't you keep your mouth shut?" said the person
in gaiters.

248 The Wheels of Chance

" Exactly," said Mr. Hoopdriver, driving it home
with great fierceness. " Why don't you shut your
ugly mouth?"

" It's as much as my situation's worth," protested
Charlie.

"You should have thought of that before," said
Hoopdriver.

"There's no occasion to be so thunderin' 'ot
about it. I only meant the thing joking," said
Charlie. "As one gentleman to another, I'm very
sorry if the gentleman's annoyed — "

Everybody began to speak at once. Mr. Hoop-
driver twirled his moustache. He felt that Char-
lie's recognition of his gentlemanliness was at any
rate a redeeming feature. But it became his
pose to ride hard and heavy over the routed
foe. He shouted some insulting phrase over the
tumult.

"You're regular abject," the man in gaiters was
saying to Charlie.

More confusion.

" Only don't think I'm afraid, — not of a spindle-
legged cuss like him ! " shouted Charlie. " Because
I ain't."

"Change of front," thought Hoopdriver, a little
startled. "Where are we going?"

" Don't sit there and be abusive," said the man

The Wheels of Chance 249

in velveteen. " He's offered to hit you, and if I
was him, I'd hit you now."

"All right, then," said Charlie, with a sudden
change of front and springing to his feet. " If I
must, I must. Now, then ! " At that, Hoopdriver,
the child of Fate, rose too, with a horrible sense
that his internal monitor was right. Things had
taken a turn. He had made a mess of it, and now
there was nothing for it, so far as he could see, but
to hit the man at once. He and Charlie stood six
feet apart, with a table between, both very breath-
less and fierce. A vulgar fight in a public-house,
and with what was only too palpably a footman !
Good Heavens ! And this was the dignified, scorn-
ful remonstrance ! How the juice had it all hap-
pened? Go round the table at him, I suppose.
But before the brawl could achieve itself, the man
in gaiters intervened. " Not here," he said, step-
ping between the antagonists. Everyone was stand-
ing up.

"Charlie's artful," said the little man with the
beard.

"Buller's yard," said the man with the gaiters,
taking the control of the entire affair with the easy
readiness of an accomplished practitioner. " If the
gentleman don't mind." Buller's yard, it seemed,
was the very place. "We'll do the thing regular

250 The Wheels of Chance

and decent, if you please." And before he com-
pletely realized what was happening, Hoopdriver was
being marched out through the back premises of the
inn, to the first and only fight with fists that was ever
to glorify his life.

Outwardly, so far as the intermittent moonlight
showed, Mr. Hoopdriver was quietly but eagerly
prepared to fight. But inwardly he was a chaos
of conflicting purposes. It was extraordinary how
things happened. One remark had trod so closely
on the heels of another, that he had had the great-
est difficulty in following the development of the
•business. He distinctly remembered himself walking
across from one room to the other, — a dignified,
even an aristocratic figure, primed with considered
eloquence, intent upon a scathing remonstrance
to these wretched yokels, regarding their manners.
Then incident had flickered into incident until here
he was out in a moonlit lane, — a slight, dark figure
in a group of larger, indistinct figures, — marching
in a quiet, business-like way towards some un-
known horror at Buller's yard. Fists ! It was
astonishing. It was terrible ! In front of him was
the pallid figure of Charles, and he saw that the
man in gaiters held Charles kindly but firmly by
the arm.

"It's blasted rot," Charles was saying, "getting

The Wheels of Chance 251

up a fight just for a thing like that; all very well
for 'im. 'E's got 'is 'olidays ; 'e 'asn't no blessed
dinner to take up to-morrow night like I 'ave. —
No need to numb my arm, is there?"

They went into Buller's yard through gates. There
were sheds in Buller's yard — sheds of mystery that
the moonlight could not solve — a smell of cows,
and a pump stood out clear and black, throwing
a clear black shadow on the whitewashed wall.
And here it was his face was to be battered to a
pulp. He knew this was the uttermost folly, to
stand up here and be pounded, but the way out
of it was beyond his imagining. Yet afterwards — ?
Could he ever face her again? He patted his Nor-
folk jacket and took his ground with his back to
the gate. How did one square? So? Suppose one
were to turn and run even now, run straight back to
the inn and lock himself into his bedroom? They
couldn't make him come out — anyhow. He could
prosecute them for assault if they did. How did
one set about prosecuting for assault? He saw
Charles, with his face ghastly white under the moon,
squaring in front of him.

He caught a blow on the arm and gave ground.
Charles pressed him. Then he hit with his right
and with the violence of despair. It was a hit of
his own devising, — an impromptu, — but it chanced

252 The Wheels of Chance

to coincide with the regulation hook hit at the
head. He perceived with a leap of exultation that
the thing his fist had met was the jawbone of
Charles. It was the sole gleam of pleasure he
experienced during the fight, and it was quite
momentary. He had hardly got home upon Charles
before he was struck in the chest and whirled back-
ward. He had the greatest difficulty in keeping
his feet. He felt that his heart was smashed flat.
" Gord darm ! " said somebody, dancing toe in hand
somewhere behind him. As Mr. Hoopdriver stag-
gered, Charles gave a loud and fear-compelling cry.
He seemed to tower over Hoopdriver in the moon-
light. Both his fists were whirling. It was annihi-
lation coming — no less. Mr. Hoopdriver ducked
perhaps and certainly gave ground to the right,
hit, and missed. Charles swept round to the left,
missing generously. A blow glanced over Mr. Hoop-
driver's left ear, and the flanking movement was
completed. Another blow behind the ear. Heaven
and earth spun furiously round Mr. Hoopdriver, and
then he became aware of a figure in a light suit
shooting violently through an open gate into the
night. The man in gaiters sprang forward past Mr.
Hoopdriver, but too late to intercept the fugitive.
There were shouts, laughter, and Mr. Hoopdriver,
still solemnly squaring, realized the great and won-

253

254 The Wheels of Chance

derful truth — Charles had fled. He, Hoopdriver,
had fought and, by all the rules of war, had
won.

"That was a pretty cut under the jaw you gave
him," the toothless little man with the beard was
remarking in an unexpectedly friendly manner.

"The fact of it is," said Mr. Hoopdriver, sitting
beside the road to Salisbury, and with the sound of
distant church bells in his ears, "I had to give the
fellow a lesson; simply had to."

"It seems so dreadful that you should have to
knock people about," said Jessie.

"These louts get unbearable," said Mr. Hoop-
driver. " If now and then we didn't give them a
lesson, — well, a lady cyclist in the roads would be
an impossibility,"

"I suppose every woman shrinks from violence,"
said Jessie. " I suppose men are braver — in a way

— than women. It seems to me — I can't imagine

— how one could bring oneself to face a roomful
of rough characters, pick out the bravest, and give
him an exemplary thrashing. I quail at the idea.
I thought only Ouida's guardsmen did things like
that."

"It was nothing more than my juty* — as a gen-
tleman," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

The Wheels of Chance 255

" But to walk straight into the face of danger ! "
" It's habit," said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite modestly,
flicking off a particle of cigarette ash that had set-
tled on his knee.

THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRlVER
XXXIII

ON Monday morning the two fugitives found
themselves breakfasting at the Golden Pheasant in
Blandford. They were in the course of an elaborate
doubling movement through Dorsetshire towards
Ringwood, where Jessie anticipated an answer from
her schoolmistress friend. By this time they had
been nearly sixty hours together, and you will under-
stand that Mr. Hoopdriver's feelings had undergone
a considerable intensification and development. At
first Jessie had been only an impressionist sketch
upon his mind, something feminine, active, and
dazzling, something emphatically "above " him, cast
into his company by a kindly fate. His chief idea,
at the outset, as you know, had been to live up to
her level, by pretending to be more exceptional,
more wealthy, better educated, and, above all, better
born than he was. His knowledge of the feminine
mind was almost entirely derived from the young
ladies he had met in business, and in that class
256

The Wheels of Chance 257

(as in military society and among gentlemen's ser-
vants) the good old tradition of a brutal social
exclusiveness is still religiously preserved. He had
an almost intolerable dread of her thinking him a
'bounder.' Later he began to perceive the distinc-
tion of her idiosyncracies. Coupled with a magnifi-
cent want of experience was a splendid enthusiasm
for abstract views of the most advanced description,
and. her strength of conviction completely carried
Hoopdriver away. She was going to Live her Own
Life, with emphasis, and Mr. Hoopdriver was pro-
foundly stirred to similar resolves. So soon as he
grasped the tenor of her views, he perceived that he
himself had thought as much from his earliest years.
"Of course," he remarked, in a flash of sexual pride,
"a man is freer than a woman. End in the Col-
onies, y'know, there isn't half the Conventionality
you find in society in this country."

He made one or two essays in the display of
unconventionality, and was quite unaware that he
impressed her as a narrow-minded person. He
suppressed the habits of years and made no proposal
to go to church. He discussed church-going in a
liberal spirit. "It's jest a habit," he said, "jest a
custom. I don't see what good it does you at all,
really." And he made a lot of excellent jokes at
the chimney-pot hat, jokes he had read in the Globe

258 The Wheels of Chance

' turnovers ' on that subject. But he showed his
gentle breeding by keeping his gloves on all through
the Sunday's ride, and ostentatiously throwing away
more than half a cigarette when they passed a church
whose congregation was gathering for afternoon ser-
vice. He cautiously avoided literary topics, except
by way of compliment, seeing that she was presently
to be writing books.

It was on Jessie's initiative that they attended
service in the old-fashioned gallery of Blandford
church. Jessie's conscience, I may perhaps tell
you, was now suffering the severest twinges. She
perceived clearly that things were not working out
quite along the lines she had designed. She had
read her Olive Schreiner and George Egerton, and
so forth, with all the want of perfect comprehension
of one who is still emotionally a girl. She knew the
thing to do was to have a flat and to go to the British
Museum and write leading articles for the daily
papers until something better came along. If
Bechamel (detestable person) had kept his promises,
instead of behaving with unspeakable horridness, all
would have been well. Now her only hope was that
liberal-minded woman, Miss Mergle, who, a year
ago, had sent her out, highly educated, into the
world. Miss Mergle had told her at parting to live
fearlessly and truly, and had further given her a

The Wheels of Chance 259

volume of Emerson's Essays and Motley's "Dutch
Republic," to help her through the rapids of adoles-
cence.

Jessie's feelings for her stepmother's household at
Surbiton amounted to an active detestation. There
are no graver or more solemn women in the world
than these clever girls whose scholastic advancement
has retarded their feminine coquetry. In spite of
the advanced tone of •' Thomas Plantagenet's ' anti-
marital novel, Jessie had speedily seen through that
amiable woman's amiable defences. The variety of
pose necessitated by the corps of 'Men' annoyed
her to an altogether unreasonable degree. To return
to this life of ridiculous unreality — unconditional
capitulation to ' Conventionality ' was an exasperat-
ing prospect. Yet what else was there to do?

You will understand, therefore, that at times she
was moody (and Mr. Hoopdriver respectfully silent
and attentive) and at times inclined to eloquent
denunciation of the existing order of things. She
was a Socialist, Hoopdriver learnt, and he gave a
vague intimation that he went further, intending,
thereby, no less than the horrors of anarchism. He
would have owned up to the destruction of the Winter
Palace indeed, had he had the faintest idea where the
Winter Palace was, and had his assurance amounted
to certainty that the Winter Palace was destroyed.

260 The Wheels of Chance

He agreed with her cordially that the position of
women was intolerable, but checked himself on the
verge of the proposition that a girl ought not to
expect a fellow to hand down boxes for her when he
was getting the ' swap ' from a customer. It was
Jessie's preoccupation with her own perplexities, no
doubt, that delayed the unveiling of Mr. Hoopdriver
all through Saturday and Sunday. Once or twice,
however, there were incidents that put him about
terribly — even questions that savoured of suspicion.
On Sunday night, for no conceivable reason, an
unwonted wakefulness came upon him. Unaccount-
ably he realised he was a contemptible liar. All
through the small hours of Monday he reviewed the
tale of his falsehoods, and when he tried to turn his
mind from that, the financial problem suddenly rose
upon him. He heard two o'clock strike, and three.
It is odd how unhappy some of us are at times, when
we are at our happiest.

XXXIV

"GOOD morning, Madam," said Hoopdriver, as
Jessie came into the breakfast room of the Golden .' /
Pheasant on Monday morning, and he smiled,
bowed, rubbed his hands together, and pulled out a
chair for her, and rubbed hie hands again.

She stopped abruptly, with a puzzled expression on
her face. "Where have I seen that before?" she
said.

"The chair?" said Hoopdriver, flushing.

"No — the attitude."

She came forward and shook hands with him,
looking the while curiously into his face. "And
— Madam?"

"It's a habit," said Mr. Hoopdriver, guiltily.
"A bad habit. Calling ladies Madam. You must
put it down to our colonial roughness. Out there —
up country — y'know — the ladies — so rare — we
call 'em all Madam."

"You have some funny habits, brother Chris," said
Jessie. " Before you sell your diamond shares and
go into society, as you say, and stand for Parliament
261

262 The Wheels of Chance

— What a fine thing it is to be a man ! — you must
cure yourself. That habit of bowing as you do, and
rubbing your hands, and looking expectant."

"It's a habit."

"I know. But I don't think it a good one.
You don't mind my telling you? "

"Not a bit. I'm grateful."

"I'm blessed or afflicted with a trick of observa-
tion," said Jessie, looking at the breakfast table. Mr.
Hoopdriver put his hand to his moustache and then,
thinking this might be another habit, checked his
arm and stuck his hand into his pocket. He felt
juiced awkward, to use his private formula. Jessie's
eye wandered to the armchair, where a piece of
binding was loose, and, possibly to carry out her
theory of an observant disposition, she turned and
asked him for a pin.

Mr. Hoopdriver 's hand fluttered instinctively to
his lappel, and there, planted by habit, were a couple
of stray pins he had impounded.

"What an odd place to put pins!" exclaimed
Jessie, taking it.

" It's 'andy," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I saw a chap
in a shop do it once."

"You must have a careful disposition," she said,
over her shoulder, kneeling down to the chair.

" In the centre of Africa — up country, that is —

The Wheels of Chance 263

one learns to value pins," said Mr. Hoopdriver, after
a perceptible pause. "There weren't over many
pins in Africa. They don't lie about on the ground
there." His face was now in a fine, red glow.
Where would the draper break out next? He thrust
his hands into his coat pockets, then took one out
again, furtively removed the second pin and dropped
it behind him gently. It fell with a loud 'ping ' on
the fender. Happily she made no remark, being
preoccupied with the binding of the chair.

Mr. Hoopdriver, instead of sitting down, went up
to the table and stood against it, with his finger-tips
upon the cloth. They were keeping breakfast a tre-
mendous time. He took up his rolled serviette,
looked closely and scrutinisingly at the ring, then
put his hand under the fold of the napkin and exam-
ined the texture, and put the thing down again.
Then he had a vague impulse to finger his hollow
wisdom tooth — happily checked. He suddenly dis-
covered he was standing as if the table was a counter,
and sat down forthwith. He drummed with his hand
on the table. He felt dreadfully hot and self-con-
scious.

"Breakfast is late," said Jessie, standing up.

"Isn't it?"

Conversation was slack. Jessie wanted to know
the distance to Ringwood. Then silence fell again.

264 The Wheels of Chance

Mr. Hoopdriver, very uncomfortable and studying
an easy bearing, looked again at the breakfast things
and then idly lifted the corner of the tablecloth on
the ends of his ringers, and regarded it. " Fifteen
three," he thought, privately.

"Why do you do that? " said Jessie.

" What?" said Hoopdriver, dropping the tablecloth
convulsively.

"Look at the cloth like that. I saw you do it
yesterday, too."

Mr. Hoopdriver 's face became quite a bright red.
He began pulling his moustache nervously. " I
know," he said. "I know. It's a queer habit, I
know. But out there, you know, there's native ser-
vants, you know, and — it's a queer thing to talk
about — but one has to look at things to see, don't
y'know, whether they're quite clean or not. It's got
to be a habit."

"How odd!" said Jessie.

"Isn't it?" mumbled Hoopdriver.

"If I were a Sherlock Holmes," said Jessie, "I
suppose I could have told you were a colonial from
little things like that. But anyhow, I guessed it,
didn't I?"

"Yes," said Hoopdriver, in a melancholy tone,
"you guessed it."

Why not seize the opportunity for a neat confes-

The Wheels of Chance 265

sion, and add, "unhappily in this case you guessed
wrong." Did she suspect? Then, at the psycholog-
ical moment, the girl bumped the door open with her
tray and brought in the coffee and scrambled eggs.

"I am rather lucky with my intuitions, sometimes,"
said Jessie.

Remorse that had been accumulating in his mind
for two days surged to the top of his mind. What a
shabby liar he was !

And, besides, he must sooner or later, inevitably,
give himself away.

XXXV

MR. HOOPDRIVER helped the eggs and then, instead
of beginning, sat with his cheek on his hand, watching
Jessie pour out the coffee. His ears were a bright
red, and his eyes bright. He took his coffee cup
clumsily, cleared his throat, suddenly leant back in
his chair, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
" I'll do it," he said aloud.

"Do what?" said Jessie, looking up in surprise
over the coffee pot. She was just beginning her
scrambled egg.

" Own up."

"Own what?"

" Miss Milton — I'm a liar."

He put his head on one side and regarded her with
a frown of tremendous resolution. Then in measured
accents, and moving his head slowly from side to
side, he announced, " Ay'm a deraper."

" You're a draper ? I thought — "

" You thought wrong. But it's bound to come up.
Pins, attitude, habits — It's plain enough.

" I'm a draper's assistant let out for a ten-days
266

267

268 The Wheels of Chance

holiday. Jest a draper's assistant. Not much, is it?
A counter-jumper."

" A draper's assistant isn't a position to be ashamed
of," she said, recovering, and not quite understanding
yet what this all meant.

"Yes, it is," he said, "for a man, in this country
now. To be just another man's hand, as I am. To
have to wear what clothes you are told, and go to
church to please customers, and work — There's no
other kind of men stand such hours. A drunken
bricklayer's a king to It."

" But why are you telling me this now? "

" It's important you should know at once."

"But, Mr. Benson — "

"That isn't all. If you don't mind my speaking
about myself a bit, there's a few things I'd like to tell
you. I can't go on deceiving you. My name's not
Benson. Why I told you Benson, I don't know.
Except that I'm a kind of fool. Well — I wanted
somehow to seem more than I was. My name's
Hoopdriver."

"Yes?"

"And that about South Africa — and that lion."

"Well?"

" Lies."

"Lies!"

"And the discovery of diamonds on the ostrich

The Wheels of Chance 269

farm. Lies too. And all the reminiscences of the
giraffes — lies too. I never rode on no giraffes. I'd
be afraid."

He looked at her with a kind of sullen satis-
faction. He had eased his conscience, anyhow. She
regarded him in infinite perplexity. This was a
new side altogether to the man. " But why" she
began.

" Why did I tell you such things ? / don't know.
Silly sort of chap, I expect. I suppose I wanted to
impress you. But somehow, now, I want you to know
the truth."

Silence. Breakfast untouched. "I thought I'd
tell you," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I suppose it's
snobbishness and all that kind of thing, as much as
anything. I lay awake pretty near all last night
thinking about myself; thinking what a got-up imita-
tion of a man I was, and all that."

" And you haven't any diamond shares, and you
are not going into Parliament, and you're not — "

" All Lies," said Hoopdriver, in a sepulchral voice.
" Lies from beginning to end. 'Ow I came to tell
'em I don't know."

She stared at him blankly.

" I never set eyes on Africa in my life," said Mr.
Hoopdriver, completing the confession. Then he
pulled his right hand from his pocket, and with the

270 The Wheels of Chance

nonchalance of one to whom the bitterness of death
is passed, began to drink his coffee.

" It's a little surprising," began Jessie, vaguely.

"Think it over," said. Mr. Hoopdriver. "I'm
sorry from the bottom of my heart."

And then breakfast proceeded in silence. Jessie
ate very little, and seemed lost in thought. Mr.
Hoopdriver was so overcome by contrition and anx-
iety that he consumed an extraordinarily large break-
fast out of pure nervousness, and ate his scrambled
eggs for the most part with the spoon that belonged
properly to the marmalade. His eyes were gloomily
downcast. She glanced at him through her eyelashes.
Once or twice she struggled with laughter, once or
twice she seemed to be indignant.

" I don't know what to think," she said at last. "I
don't know what to make of you — brother Chris.
I thought, do you know? that you were perfectly
honest. And somehow — "

"Well?"

" I think so still."

" Honest — with all those lies ! "

" I wonder."

" I don't," said Mr. Hoopdriver. " I'm fair ashamed
of myself. But anyhow — I've stopped deceiving you."

" I thought" said the Young Lady in Grey, " that
story of the lion — "

The Wheels of Chance 271

" Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " Don't remind
me of that"

" I thought, somehow, I felt, that the things you
said didn't ring quite true." She suddenly broke
out in laughter, at the expression of his face. " Of
course you are honest," she said. "How could I ever
doubt it? As if / had never pretended! I see it
all now."

Abruptly she rose, and extended her hand across
the breakfast things. He looked at her doubtfully,
and saw the dancing friendliness in her eyes. He
scarcely understood at first. He rose, holding the
marmalade spoon, and took her proffered hand with
abject humility. "Lord!" he broke out, "if you
aren't enough — but there ! "

" I see it all now." A brilliant inspiration had
suddenly obscured her humour. She sat down sud-
denly, and he sat down too. " You did it," she said,
" because you wanted to help me. And you thought
I was too Conventional to take help from one I might
think my social inferior."

"That was partly it," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"How you misunderstood me ! " she said.

"You don't mind?"

" It was noble of you. But I am sorry," she said,
"you should think me likely to be ashamed of you
because you follow a decent trade."

272 The Wheels of Chance

" I didn't know at first, you see," said Mr. Hoop-
driver.

And he submitted meekly to a restoration of his
self-respect. He was as useful a citizen as could be, —
it was proposed and carried, — and his lying was of the
noblest. And so the breakfast concluded much more
happily than his brightest expectation, and they rode
out of ruddy little Blandford as though no shadow
of any sort had come between them.

XXXVI

As they were sitting by the roadside among the pine
trees half-way up a stretch of hill between Wimborne
and Ringwood, however, Mr. Hoopdriver reopened
the question of his worldly position.

" Ju think," he began abruptly, removing a medita-
tive cigarette from his mouth, " that a draper's shop-
man is a decent citizen? "

"Why not?"

"When he puts people off with what they don't
quite want, for instance ? "

"Need he do that?"

" Salesmanship," said Hoopdriver. " Wouldn't get
a crib if he didn't. — It's no good your arguing. It's
not a particularly honest nor a particularly useful trade ;
it's not very high up ; there's no freedom and no leis-
ure— seven to eight- thirty every day in the week;
don't leave much edge to live on, does it? — real
workmen laugh at us and educated chaps like bank
clerks and solicitors' clerks look down on us. You look
respectable outside, and inside you are packed in dor-
mitories like convicts, fed on bread and butter and
273

274

The Wheels of Chance 275

bullied like slaves. You're just superior enough to
feel that you're not superior. Without capital there's
no prospects ; one draper in a hundred don't even earn
enough to marry on ; and if he does marry, his G. V.
can just use him to black boots if he likes, and he
daren't put his back up. That's drapery ! And you
tell me to be contented. Would you be contented if
you was a shop girl? "

She did not answer. She looked at him with dis-
tress in her brown eyes, and he remained gloomily in
possession of the field.

Presently he spoke. " I've been thinking," he said,
and stopped.

She turned her face, resting her cheek on the palm
of her hand. There was a light in her eyes that made
the expression of them tender. Mr. Hoopdriver had
not looked in her face while he had talked. He had
regarded the grass, and pointed his remarks with red-
knuckled hands held open and palms upwards. Now
they hung limply over his knees.

"Well?" she said.

" I was thinking it this morning," said Mr. Hoop-
driver.

"Yes?"

"Of course it's silly."

"Well?"

" It's like this. I'm twenty-three, about. I had my

276 The Wheels of Chance

schooling all right to fifteen, say. Well, that leaves
me eight years behind. — Is it too late ? I wasn't so
backward. I did algebra, and Latin up to auxiliary
verbs, and French genders. I got a kind of grounding."

" And now you mean, should you go on working? "

"Yes," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "That's it. You
can't do much at drapery without capital, you know.
But if I could get really educated. . . . I've thought
sometimes . . ."

"Why not? " said the Young Lady in Grey.

Mr. Hoopdriver was surprised to see it in that light.
"You think? "he said.

" Of course. You are a Man. You are free — "
She warmed. " I wish I were you to have the chance
of that struggle."

" Am I Man enough ? " said Mr. Hoopdriver aloud,
but addressing himself. "There's that eight years,"
he said to her.

"You can make it up. What you call educated
men — They're not going on. , You can catch them.
They are quite satisfied. Playing golf, and thinking
of clever things to say to women like my stepmother,
and dining out. You're in front of them already in
one thing. They think they know everything. You
don't. And they know such little things."

" Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver. " How you encour-
age a fellow 1 "

The Wheels of Chance 277

" If I could only help you," she said, and left an
eloquent hiatus. He became pensive again.

" It's pretty evident you don't think much of a
draper," he said abruptly.

Another interval. " Hundreds of men," she said,
" have come from the very lowest ranks of life.
There was Burns, a ploughman; and Hugh Miller,
a stonemason ; and plenty of others. Dodsley was a
footman — "

" But drapers ! We're too — sort of shabby genteel
to rise. Our coats and cuffs might get crumpled — "

" Wasn't there a Clarke who wrote theology ? He
was a draper."

" There was one started a sewing cotton, the only
one I ever heard tell of."

" Have you ever read ' Hearts Insurgent ' ? "

" Never," said Mr. Hoopdriver. He did not wait
for her context, but suddenly broke out with an account
of his literary requirements. " The fact is — I've read
precious little. One don't get much of a chance,
situated as I am. We have a library at business, and
I've gone through that. Most Besant I've read, and a
lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider Haggard and Marie
Corelli — and, well — a Ouida or so. They're good
stories, of course, and first-cjass writers, but they didn't
seem to have much to do with me. But there's heaps
of books one hears talked about, I haven't read."

278 The Wheels of Chance

"Don't you read any other books but novels?"

"Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business,
and you can't get the books. I have been to some
extension lectures, of course, * 'Lizabethan Dramatists,'
it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know.
And I went and did wood-carving at the same place.
But it didn't seem leading nowhere, and I cut my
thumb and chucked it."

He made a depressing spectacle, with his face
anxious and his hands limp. "It makes me sick"
he said, " to think how I've been fooled with. My
old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced hiding.
He's a thief. He pretended to undertake to make
a man of me, and he's stole twenty-three years of
my life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings.
Here I am ! I don't know anything, and I can't
do anything, and all the learning time is over."

"Is it?" she said; but he did not seem to hear
her.

" My o' people didn't know any better, and went
and paid thirty pounds premium — thirty pounds
down — to have me made this. The G. V. prom-
ised to teach me the trade, and he never taught me
anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do
with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was
locked up — well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape
and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns

The Wheels of Chance 279

and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm
not such muck that I might not have been better
— with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who
sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they'd
been fooled about as I've been. At twenty-three —
it's a long start."

He looked up with a wintry smile, a sadder and
wiser Hoopdriver indeed than him of the glorious
imaginings. "It's you done this," he said. "You're
real. And it sets me thinking what I really am, and
what I might have been. Suppose it was all differ-
ent—"

"Make it different."

"How?"

"Work. Stop playing at life. Face it like a
man."

" Ah ! " said Hoopdriver, glancing at her out of
the corners of his eyes. " And even then —

" No ! It's not much good. I'm beginning too
late."

And there, in blankly thoughtful silence, that con-
versation ended.

IN THE NEW FOREST
XXXVII

AT Ringwood they lunched, and Jessie met with a
disappointment. There was no letter for her at the
post office. Opposite the hotel, The Chequered
Career, was a machine shop with a conspicuously
second-hand Marlborough Club tandem tricycle dis-
played in the window, together with the announce-
ment that bicycles and tricycles were on hire within.
The establishment was impressed on Mr. Hoop-
driver's mind by the proprietor's action in coming
across the road and narrowly inspecting their ma-
chines. His action revived a number of disagreeable
impressions, but, happily, came to nothing. While
they were still lunching, a tall clergyman, with a
heated face, entered the room and sat down at the
table next to theirs. He was in a kind of holiday
costume; that is to say, he had a more than usually
high collar, fastened behind and rather the worse for
the weather, and his long-tail coat had been replaced
by a black jacket of quite remarkable brevity. He
280

The Wheels of Chance 281

had faded brown shoes on his feet, his trouser legs
were grey with dust, and he wore a hat of piebald
straw in the place of the customary soft felt. He
was evidently socially inclined.

"A most charming day, sir," he said, in a ringing
tenor.

"Charming," said Mr. Hoopdriver, over a portion
of pie.

"You are, I perceive, cycling through this delight-
ful country," said the clergyman.

"Touring," explained Mr. Hoopdriver.

"I can imagine that, with a properly oiled ma-
chine, there can be no easier nor pleasanter way of
seeing the country."

"No," said Mr. Hoopdriver ; "it isn't half a bad
way of getting about."

" For a young and newly married couple, a tandem
bicycle must be, I should imagine, a delightful bond."

" Quite so," said Mr. Hoopdriver, reddening a little.

"Do you ride a tandem?"

"No — we're separate," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

" The motion through the air is indisputably of a
very exhilarating description." With that decision,
the clergyman turned to give his orders to the attend-
ant, in a firm, authoritative voice, for a cup of tea,
two gelatine lozenges, bread and butter, salad, and
pie to follow. " The gelatine lozenges I must have.

282 The Wheels of Chance

I require them to precipitate the tannin in my tea,"
he remarked to the room at large, and folding his
hands, remained for some time with his chin thereon,
staring fixedly at a little picture over Mr. Hoop-
driver's head.

"I myself am a cyclist," said the clergyman,
descending suddenly upon Mr. Hoopdriver.

" Indeed ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, attacking the
moustache. "What machine, may I ask?"

"I have recently become possessed of a tricycle.
A bicycle is, I regret to say, considered too — how
shall I put it? — flippant by my parishioners. So I
have a tricycle. I have just been hauling it hither. "

" Hauling ! " said Jessie, surprised.

"With a shoe lace. And partly carrying it on my
back."

The pause was unexpected. Jessie had some
trouble with a crumb. Mr. Hoopdriver' s face
passed through several phases of surprise. Then
he saw the explanation. "Had an accident?"

"I can hardly call it an accident. The wheels
suddenly refused to go round. I found myself about
five miles from here with an absolutely immobile
machine."

"'Ow!" said Mr. Hoopdriver, trying to seem
intelligent, and Jessie glanced at this insane person.

"It appears," said the clergyman, satisfied with

283

284 The Wheels of Chance

the effect he had created, "that my man carefully
washed out the bearings with paraffin, and let the
machine dry without oiling it again. The conse-
quence was that they became heated to a consider-
able temperature and jammed. Even at the outset
the machine ran stiffly as well as noisily, and I,
being inclined to ascribe this stiffness to my own
lassitude, merely redoubled my exertions."

"'Ot work all round," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"You could scarcely put it more appropriately.
It is my rule of life to do whatever I find to do with
all my might. I believe, indeed, that the bearings
became red hot. Finally one of the wheels jammed
together. A side wheel it was, so that its stoppage
necessitated an inversion of the entire apparatus, —
an inversion in which I participated."

"Meaning, that you went over ?" said Mr. Hoop-
driver, suddenly much amused.

"Precisely. And not brooking my defeat, I
suffered repeatedly. You may understand, perhaps,
a natural impatience. I expostulated — playfully,
of course. Happily the road was not overlooked.
Finally, the entire apparatus became rigid, and
I abandoned the unequal contest. For all prac-
tical purposes the tricycle was no better than a
heavy chair without castors. It was a case of haul-
ing or carrying."

The Wheels of Chance 285

The clergyman's nutriment appeared in the doorway.

"Five miles," said the clergyman.

He began at once to eat bread and butter vigor-
ously. "Happily," he said, "I am an eupeptic,
energetic sort of person — on principle. I would all
men were likewise."

"It's the best way," agreed Mr. Hoopdriver, and
the conversation gave precedence to bread and butter.

"Gelatine," said the clergyman, presently, stirring
his tea thoughtfully, "precipitates the tannin in one's
tea and renders it easy of digestion."

"That's a useful sort of thing to know," said Mr.
Hoopdriver.

"You are altogether welcome," said the clergyman,
biting generously at two pieces of bread and butter
folded together.

In the afternoon our two wanderers rode on at
an easy pace towards Stoney Cross. Conversation
languished, the topic of South Africa being in abey-
ance. Mr. Hoopdriver was silenced by disagreeable
thoughts. He had changed the last sovereign at
Ringwood. The fact had come upon him suddenly.
Now too late he was reflecting upon his resources.
There was twenty pounds or more in the post office
savings bank in Putney, but his book was locked up
in his box at the Antrobus establishment. Else this
infatuated man would certainly have surreptitiously

286 The Wheels of Chance

withdrawn the entire sum in order to prolong these
journeyings even for a few days. As it was, the
shadow of the end fell across his happiness. Strangely
enough, in spite of his anxiety and the morning's
collapse, he was still in a curious emotional state
that was certainly not misery. He was forgetting his
imaginings and posings, forgetting himself altogether
in his growing appreciation of his companion. The
most tangible trouble in his mind was the necessity
of breaking the matter to her.

A long stretch up hill tired them long before
Stoney Cross was reached, and they dismounted
and sat under the shade of a little oak tree. Near
the crest the road looped on itself, so that, looking
back, it sloped below them up to the right and then
came towards them. About them grew a rich heather
with stunted oaks on the edge of a deep ditch along
the roadside, and this road was sandy; below the
steepness of the hill, however, it was grey and barred
with shadows, for there the trees clustered thick and
tall. Mr. Hoopdriver fumbled clumsily with his
cigarettes.

"There's a thing I got to tell you," he said, try-
ing to be perfectly calm.

"Yes?" she said.

"I'd like to jest discuss your plans a bit, y'know."

"I'm very unsettled," said Jessie.

The Wheels of Chance 287

"You are thinking of writing Books?"

" Or doing Journalism, or teaching, or something
like that."

" And keeping yourself independent of your step-
mother?"

"Yes."

"How long'd it take now, to get anything of that
sort to do?"

"I don't know at all. I believe there are a great
many women journalists and sanitary inspectors, and
black-and-white artists. But I suppose it takes
time. Women, you know, edit most papers nowa-
days, George Egerton says. I ought, I suppose, to
communicate with a literary agent."

"Of course," said Hoopdriver, "it's very suitable
work. Not being heavy like the drapery."

"There's heavy brain labour, you must remember."

"That wouldn't hurt you" said Mr. Hoopdriver,
turning a compliment.

"It's like this," he said, ending a pause. "It's a
juiced nuisance alluding to these matters, but — we
got very little more money."

He perceived that Jessie started, though he did
not look at her. "I was counting, of course, on
your friend's writing and your being able to take
some action to-day." 'Take some action' was a
phrase he had learnt at his last 'swop.*

288 The Wheels of Chance

"Money, "said Jessie. "I didn't think of money."

"Hullo! Here's a tandem bicycle," said Mr.
Hoopdriver, abruptly, and pointing with his cigar-
ette.

She looked, and saw two little figures emerging
from among the trees at the foot of the slope. The
riders were bowed sternly over their work and made
a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to take the rise.
The machine was evidently too highly geared for hill
climbing, and presently the rearmost rider rose on
his saddle and hopped off, leaving his companion to
any fate he found proper. The foremost rider was a
man unused to such machines and apparently unde-
cided how to dismount. He wabbled a few yards
up the hill with a long tail of machine wabbling be-
hind him. Finally, he made an attempt to jump off
as one does off a single bicycle, hit his boot against
the backbone, and collapsed heavily, falling on his
shoulder.

She stood up. " Dear me ! " she said. " I hope
he isn't hurt."

The second rider went to the assistance of the
fallen man.

Hoopdriver stood up, too.

The lank, shaky machine was lifted up and wheeled
out of the way, and then the fallen rider, being
assisted, got up slowly and stood rubbing his arm.

The Wheels of Chance 289

No serious injury seemed to be done to the man,
and the couple presently turned their attention to the
machine by the roadside. They were not in cycling
clothes Hoopdriver observed. One wore the gro-
tesque raiment for which the Cockney discovery of
the game of golf seems indirectly blamable. Even
at this distance the flopping flatness of his cap, the
bright brown leather at the top of his calves, and
the chequering of his stockings were perceptible.
The other, the rear rider, was a slender little man
in grey.

"Amatoors," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

Jessie stood staring, and a veil of thought dropped
over her eyes. She no longer regarded the two men
who were now tinkering at the machine down below
there.

"How much have you? " she said.

He thrust his right hand into his pocket and pro-
duced six coins, counted them with his left index
finger, and held them out to her. "Thirteen four
half," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "Every penny."

" I have half a sovereign, " she said.

" Our bill wherever we stop — " The hiatus was
more eloquent than many words.

" I never thought of money coming in to stop us
like this," said Jessie.

"It's a juiced nuisance."

290 The Wheels of Chance

" Money," said Jessie. " Is it possible — Surely !
Conventionality ! May only people of means — Live
their own Lives ? I never thought ..."

Pause.

" Here's some more cyclists coming," said Mr.
Hoopdriver.

The two men were both busy with their bicycle
still, but now from among the trees emerged the
massive bulk of a ' Marlborough Club ' tandem, rid-
den by a slender woman in grey and a burly man in
a Norfolk jacket. Following close upon this came
a lank black figure in a piebald straw hat, riding a
tricycle of antiquated pattern with two large wheels
in front. The man in grey remained bowed over the
bicycle, with his stomach resting on the saddle, but
his companion stood up and addressed some remark
to the tricycle riders. Then it seemed as if he
pointed up hill to where Mr. Hoopdriver and his
companion stood side by side. A still odder thing
followed; the lady in grey took out her handker-
chief, appeared to wave it for a moment, and then
at a hasty motion from her companion the white
signal vanished.

"Surely," said Jessie, peering under her hand.
"It's never—"

The tandem tricycle began to ascend the hill, quar-
tering elaborately from side to side to ease the ascent.

The Wheels of Chance 291

It was evident, from his heaving shoulders and de-
pressed head, that the burly gentleman was exerting
himself. The clerical person on the tricycle assumed
the shape of a note of interrogation. Then on the heels
of this procession came a dogcart driven by a man in
a billycock hat and containing a lady in dark green.

" Looks like some sort of excursion," said Hoop-
driver.

Jessie did not answer. She was still peering under
her hand. " Surely," she said.

The clergyman's efforts were becoming convulsive.
With a curious jerking motion, the tricycle he rode
twisted round upon itself, and he partly dismounted
and partly fell off. He turned his machine up hill
again immediately and began to wheel it. Then the
burly gentleman dismounted, and with a courtly at-
tentiveness assisted the lady in grey to alight. There
was some little difference of opinion as to assistance,
she so clearly wished to help push. Finally she gave
in, and the burly gentleman began impelling the
machine up hill by his own unaided strength. His
face made a dot of brilliant colour among the greys
and greens at the foot of the hill. The tandem bicycle
was now, it seems, repaired, and this joined the tail
of the procession, its riders walking behind the dog-
cart, from which the lady in green and the driver
had now descended.

292 The Wheels of Chance

" Mr. Hoopdriver," said Jessie. "Those people —
I'm almost sure — "

" Lord ! " said Mr. Hoopdriver, reading the rest in
her face, and he turned to pick up his machine at once.
Then he dropped it and assisted her to mount.

At the sight of Jessie mounting against the sky
line the people coming up the hill suddenly became
excited and ended Jessie's doubts at once. Two
handkerchiefs waved, and some one shouted. The
riders of the tandem bicycle began to run it up hill,
past the other vehicles. But our young people did
not wait for further developments of the pursuit. In
another moment they were out of sight, riding hard
down a steady incline towards Stoney Cross.

Before they had dropped among the trees out of
sight of the hill brow, Jessie looked back and saw
the tandem rising over the crest, with its rear rider
just tumbling into the saddle. "They're coming,"
she said, and bent her head over her handles in
true professional style.

They whirled down into the valley, over a white
bridge, and saw ahead of them a number of shaggy
little ponies frisking in the roadway. Involuntarily
they slackened. "Shoo !" said Mr. Hoopdriver, and
the ponies kicked up their heels derisively. At that
Mr. Hoopdriver lost his temper and charged at
them, narrowly missed one, and sent them jumping

The Wheels of Chance 293

the ditch into the bracken under the trees, leaving
the way clear for Jessie.

Then the road rose quietly but persistently; the
treadles grew heavy, and Mr. Hoopdriver's breath
sounded like a saw. The tandem appeared, making
frightful exertions, at the foot, while the chase was
still climbing. Then, thank Heaven ! a crest and a
stretch of up and down road, whose only disadvantage
was its pitiless exposure to the afternoon sun. The
tandem apparently dismounted at the hill, and did
not appear against the hot blue sky until they were
already near some trees and a good mile away.

"We're gaining," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with a little
Niagara of perspiration dropping from brow to cheek.
" That hill— "

But that was their only gleam of success. They
were both nearly spent. Hoopdriver, indeed, was
quite spent, and only a feeling of shame prolonged
the liquidation of his bankrupt physique. From that
point the tandem gained upon them steadily. At the
Rufus Stone, it was scarcely a hundred yards behind.
Then one desperate spurt, and they found themselves
upon a steady downhill stretch among thick pine
woods. Downhill nothing can beat a highly geared
tandem bicycle. Automatically Mr. Hoopdriver put
up his feet, and Jessie slackened her pace. In an-
other moment they heard the swish of the fat pneu-

2Q4 The Wheels of Chance

matics behind them, and the tandem passed Hoop-
driver and drew alongside Jessie. Hoopd river felt a
mad impulse to collide with this abominable machine
as it passed him. His only consolation was to notice
that its riders, riding violently, were quite as dishev-
elled as himself and smothered in sandy white dust.

Abruptly Jessie stopped and dismounted, and the
tandem riders shot panting past them downhill.
" Brake ! " said Dangle, who was riding behind, and
stood up on the pedals. For a moment the velocity
of the thing increased, and then they saw the dust fly
from the brake, as it came down on the front tire.
Dangle's right leg floundered in the air as he came off
in the road. The tandem wobbled. " Hold it ! "
cried Phipps over his shoulder, going on downhill.
" I can't get off if you don't hold it." He put on the
brake until the machine stopped almost dead, and
then feeling unstable began to pedal again. Dangle
shouted after him. "Put out your foot, man," said
Dangle.

In this way the tandem riders were carried a good
hundred yards or more beyond their quarry. Then
Phipps realized his possibilities, slacked up with the
brake, and let the thing go over sideways, dropping on
to his right foot. With his left leg still over the sad-
dle, and still holding the handles, he looked over his
shoulder and began addressing uncomplimentary re-

296 The Wheels of Chance

marks to Dangle. "You only think of yourself," said
Phipps, with a florid face.

" They have forgotten us," said Jessie, turning her
machine.

" There was a road at the top of the hill — to Lynd-
hurst," said Hoopdriver, following her example.

"It's no good. There's the money. We must
give it up. But let us go back to that hotel at
Rufus Stone. I don't see why we should be led
captive."

So to the consternation of the tandem riders, Jessie
and her companion mounted and rode quietly back
up the hill again. As they dismounted at the hotel
entrance, the tandem overtook them, and immedi-
ately afterwards the dogcart came into view in pur-
suit. Dangle jumped off.

" Miss Milton, I believe," said Dangle, panting and
raising a damp cap from his wet and matted hair.

" I say" said Phipps, receding involuntarily.
" Don't go doing it again, Dangle. Help a chap."

" One minute," said Dangle, and ran after his col-
• league.

Jessie leant her machine against the wall, and went
into the hotel entrance. Hoopdriver remained in the
hotel entrance, limp but defiant.

AT THE RUFUS STONE
XXXVIII

HE folded his arms as Dangle and Phipps returned
towards him. Phipps was abashed by his inability
to cope with the tandem, which he was now wheel-
ing, but Dangle was inclined to be quarrelsome.
"Miss Milton?" he said briefly.

Mr. Hoopdriver bowed over his folded arms.

" Miss Milton within? " said Dangle.

"And not to be disturbed," said Mr. Hoopdriver.

"You are a scoundrel, sir," said Mr. Dangle.

"Et your service," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "She
awaits 'er stepmother, sir."

Mr. Dangle hesitated. " She will be here immedi-
ately," he said. " Here is her friend, Miss Mergle."

Mr. Hoopdriver unfolded his arms slowly, and, with
an air of immense calm, thrust his hands into his
breeches pockets. Then with one of those fatal
hesitations of his, it occurred to him that this atti-
tude was merely vulgarly defiant ; he withdrew both,
returned one and pulled at the insufficient mous-
297

298 The Wheels of Chance

tache with the other. Miss Mergle caught him in
confusion. " Is this the man ? " she said to Dangle,
and forthwith, " How dare you, sir ? How dare you
face me? That poor girl!"

"You will permit me to observe," began Mr.
Hoopdriver, with a splendid drawl, seeing himself,
for the first time in all this business, as a romantic
villain.

"Ugh," said Miss Mergle, unexpectedly striking
him about the midriff with her extended palms, and
sending him staggering backward into the hall of
the hotel.

" Let me pass ! " said Miss Mergle, in towering
indignation. "How dare you resist my passage?"
and so swept by him and into the dining-room,
wherein Jessie had sought refuge.

As Mr. Hoopdriver struggled for equilibrium with
the umbrella-stand, Dangle and Phipps, roused from
their inertia by Miss Mergle's activity, came in
upon her heels, Phipps leading. "How dare you
prevent that lady passing?" said Phipps.

Mr. Hoopdriver looked obstinate, and, to Dangle's
sense, dangerous, but he made no answer. A waiter
in full bloom appeared at the end of the passage,
guardant. " It is men of your stamp, sir," said
Phipps, "who discredit manhood."

Mr. Hoopdriver thrust his hands into his pockets.

The Wheels of Chance 299

"Who the juice are you?" shouted Mr. Hoopdriver,
fiercely.

" Who are you, sir? " retorted Phipps. " Who are
you ? That's the question. What are you, and what
are you doing, wandering at large with a young lady
under age?"

" Don't speak to him," said Dangle.

" I'm not a-going to tell all my secrets to any one
who comes at me," said Hoopdriver. " Not Likely."
And added fiercely, "And that I tell you, sir."

He and Phipps stood, legs apart and both looking
exceedingly fierce at one another, and Heaven alone
knows what might not have happened, if the long
clergyman had not appeared in the doorway, heated
but deliberate. " Petticoated anachronism," said the
long clergyman in the doorway, apparently still suf-
fering from the antiquated prejudice that demanded
a third wheel and a black coat from a clerical
rider. He looked at Phipps and Hoopdriver for
a moment, then extending his hand towards the
latter, he waved it up and down three times, saying,
"Tchak, tchak, tchak," very deliberately as he did
so. Then with a concluding " Ugh ! " and a gesture
of repugnance he passed on into the dining-room
from which the voice of Miss Mergle was distinctly
audible remarking that the weather was extremely
hot even for the time of year.

300 The Wheels of Chance

This expression of extreme disapprobation had a
very demoralizing effect upon Hoopdriver, a demoral-
ization that was immediately completed by the advent
of the massive Widgery.

" Is this the man? " said Widgery very grimly, and
producing a special voice for the occasion from some-
where deep in his neck.

" Don't hurt him ! " said Mrs. Milton, with clasped
hands. "However much wrong he has done her —
No violence ! "

"'Ow many more of you?" said Hoopdriver, at
bay before the umbrella stand.

"Where is she? What has he done with her?"
said Mrs. Milton.

"I'm not going to stand here and be insulted by
a lot of strangers," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "So you
needn't think it."

"Please don't worry, Mr. Hoopdriver," said
Jessie, suddenly appearing in the door of the din-
ing-room. " I'm here, mother." Her face was
white.

Mrs. Milton said something about her child, and
made an emotional charge at Jessie. The embrace
vanished into the dining-room. « Widgery moved as if
to follow, and hesitated. " You'd better make your-
self scarce," he said to Mr. Hoopdriver.

" I shan't do anything of the kind," said Mr. Hoop-

The Wheels of Chance 301

driver, with a catching of the breath. "I'm here
defending that young lady."

"You've done her enough mischief, I should think,"
said Widgery, suddenly walking towards the dining-
room, and closing the door behind him, leaving
Dangle and Phipps with Hoopdriver.

" Clear ! " said Phipps, threateningly.

" I shall go and sit out in the garden," said Mr.
Hoopdriver, with dignity. " There I shall remain."

" Don't make a row with him," said Dangle.

And Mr. Hoopdriver retired, unassaulted, in almost
sobbing dignity.

XXXIX

So here is the world with us again, and our senti-
mental excursion is over. In the front of the Rufus
Stone Hotel conceive a remarkable collection of
wheeled instruments, watched over by Dangle and
Phipps in grave and stately attitudes, and by the
driver of a stylish dogcart from Ringwood. In the
garden behind, in an attitude of nervous prostration,
Mr. Hoopdriver was seated on a rustic seat. Through
the open window of a private sitting-room came a
murmur of voices, as of men and women in confer-
ence. Occasionally something that might have been
a girlish sob.

"I fail to see what status Widgery has," says
Dangle, "thrusting himself in there."

"He takes too much upon himself," said Phipps.

"I've been noticing little things, yesterday and
to-day," said Dangle, and stopped.

" They went to the cathedral together in the after-
noon."

" Financially it would be a good thing for her, of
course," said Dangle, with a gloomy magnanimity.
302

303

304 The Wheels of Chance

He felt drawn to Phipps now by the common trouble,
in spite of the man's chequered legs. " Financially
it wouldn't be half bad."

"He's so dull and heavy," said Phipps.

Meanwhile, within, the clergyman had, by prompt-
itude and dexterity, taken the chair and was opening
the case against the unfortunate Jessie. I regret to
have to say that my heroine had been appalled by
the visible array of public opinion against her excur-
sion, to the pitch of tears. She was sitting with
flushed cheeks and swimming eyes at the end of the
table opposite to the clergyman. She held her hand-
kerchief crumpled up in her extended hand. Mrs.
Milton sat as near to her as possible, and occasion-
ally made little dabs with her hand at Jessie's hand,
to indicate forgiveness. These advances were not
reciprocated, which touched Widgery very much.
The lady in green, Miss Mergle (B. A.), sat on the
opposite side near the clergyman. She was the
strong-minded schoolmistress to whom Jessie had
written, and who had immediately precipitated the
pursuit upon her. She had picked up the clergyman
in Ringwood, and had told him everything forthwith,
having met him once at a British Association meet-
ing. He had immediately constituted himself ad-
ministrator of the entire business. Widgery, having
been foiled in an attempt to conduct the proceed-

The Wheels of CJiance 305

ings, stood with his legs wide apart in front of the
fireplace ornament, and looked profound and sympa-
thetic. Jessie's account of her adventures was a
chary one and given amidst frequent interruptions.
She surprised herself by skilfully omitting any allu-
sion to the Bechamel episode. She completely
exonerated Hoopdriver from the charge of being
more than an accessory to her escapade. But public
feeling was heavy against Hoopdriver. Her narra-
tive was inaccurate and sketchy, but happily the others
were too anxious to pass opinions to pin her down
to particulars. At last they had all the facts they
would permit.

"My dear young lady," said the clergyman, "I
can only ascribe this extravagant and regrettable
expedition of yours to the wildest misconceptions of
your place in the world and of your duties and
responsibilities. Even now, it seems to me, your
present emotion is due not so much to a real and
sincere penitence for your disobedience and folly as
to a positive annoyance at our most fortunate inter-
ference — "

" Not that," said Mrs. Milton, in a low tone. " Not
that."

" But why did she go off like this ? " said Widgery.
"That's what /want to know."

Jessie made an attempt to speak, but Mrs. Milton

306 The Wheels of Chance

said " Hush ! " and the ringing tenor of the clergyman
rode triumphantly over the meeting. "I cannot
understand this spirit of unrest that has seized upon
the more intelligent portion of the feminine com-
munity. You had a pleasant home, a most refined
and intelligent lady in the position of your mother,
to cherish and protect you — "

"If I had a mother," gulped Jessie, succumbing
to the obvious snare of self-pity, and sobbing.

"To cherish, protect, and advise you. And you
must needs go out of it all alone into a strange world
of unknown dangers — "

"I wanted to learn," said Jessie.

" You wanted to learn. May you never have any-
thing to #«learn."

" Ah!" from Mrs. Milton, very sadly.

"It isn't fair for all of you to argue at me at
once," submitted Jessie, irrelevantly.

"A world full of unknown dangers," resumed the
clergyman. "Your proper place was surely the
natural surroundings that are part of you. You have
been unduly influenced, it is only too apparent, by
a class of literature which, with all due respect to
a distinguished authoress that shall be nameless, I
must call the New Woman Literature. In that
deleterious ingredient of our book boxes — "

"I don't altogether agree with you there," said

The Wheels of Chance 307

Miss Mergle, throwing her head back and regarding
him firmly through her spectacles, and Mr. Widgery
coughed.

"What has all this to do with me?" asked Jessie,
availing herself of the interruption.

"The point is," said Mrs. Milton, on her defence,
" that in my books — "

"All I want to do," said Jessie, "is to go about
freely by myself. Girls do so in America. Why
not here?"

"Social conditions are entirely different in
America," said Miss Mergle. "Here we respect
Class Distinctions."

"It's very unfortunate. What I want to know is,
why I cannot go away for a holiday if I want to."

"With a strange young man, socially your in-
ferior," said Widgery, and made her flush by his
tone.

"Why not? " she said. "With anybody."

"They don't do that, even in America," said Miss
Mergle.

"My dear young lady," said the clergyman, "the
most elementary principles of decorum — A day
will come when you will better understand how
entirely subservient your ideas are to the very funda-
mentals of our present civilisation, when you will
better understand the harrowing anxiety you have

308 The Wheels of Chance

given Mrs. Milton by this inexplicable flight of
yours. We can only put things down at present, in
charity, to your ignorance — "

"You have to consider the general body of opinion,
too," said Widgery.

" Precisely, " said Miss Mergle. " There is no such
thing as conduct in the absolute."

"If once this most unfortunate business gets
about," said the clergyman, "it will do you infinite
harm."

"But Pve done nothing wrong. Why should I be
responsible for other people's — "

"The world has no charity," said Mrs. Milton.

"For a girl," said Jessie. "No."

" Now do let us stop arguing, my dear young lady,
and let us listen to reason. Never mind how or why,
this conduct of yours will do you infinite harm, if
once it is generally known. And not only that, it
will cause infinite pain to those who care for you.
But if you will return at once to -your home, causing
it to be understood that you have been with friends
for these last few days — "

"Tell lies," said Jessie.

"Certainly not. Most certainly not. But I
understand that is how your absence is understood
at present, and there is no reason — "

Jessie's grip tightened on her handkerchief. "I

The Wheels of Chance 309

won't go back," she said, "to have it as I did
before. I want a room of my own, what books I
need to read, to be free to go out by myself alone,
Teaching — "

"Anything," said Mrs. Milton; "anything in
reason."

"But will you keep your promise? " said Jessie.

"Surely you won't dictate to your mother!" said
Widgery.

"My stepmother! I don't want to dictate. I
want definite promises now."

"This is most unreasonable," said the clergyman.

"Very well," said Jessie, swallowing a sob but
with unusual resolution. "Then I won't go back.
My life is being frittered away — "

"Z^/her have her way," said Widgery.

"A room then. All your Men. I'm not to come
down and talk away half my days — "

"My dear child, if only to save you," said Mrs.
Milton.

"If you don't keep your promise — "

"Then I take it the matter is practically con-
cluded," said the clergyman. "And that you very
properly submit to return to your proper home.
And now, if I may offer a suggestion, it is that we
take tea. Freed of its tannin, nothing, I think, is
more refreshing and stimulating."

310 The Wheels of Chance

"There's a train from Lyndhurst at thirteen min-
utes to six," said Widgery, unfolding a time table.
" That gives us about half an hour or three-quarters
here — if a conveyance is obtainable, that is."

"A gelatine lozenge dropped into the tea cup
precipitates the tannin in the form of tannate of
gelatine," said the clergyman to Miss Mergle, in a
confidential bray.

Jessie stood up, and saw through the window a
depressed head and shoulders over the top of the
back of a garden seat. She moved towards the door.
"While you have tea, mother," she said, "I must
tell Mr. Hoopdriver of our arrangements."

"Don't you think I — " began the clergyman.

"No," said Jessie, very rudely; "I don't."

"But, Jessie, haven't you already — "

"You are already breaking the capitulation," said
Jessie.

"Will you want the whole half hour?" said Wid-
gery, at the bell.

"Every minute," said Jessie, in the doorway.
"He's behaved very nobly to me."

"There's tea," said Widgery.

"I've had tea."

"He may not have behaved badly," said the
clergyman. "But he's certainly an astonishingly
weak person to let a wrong-headed young girl — "

The Wheels of Chance 311

Jessie closed the door into the garden.

Meanwhile Mr. Hoopdrivef made a sad figure in
the sunlight outside. It was over, this wonderful
excursion of his, so far as she was concerned, and
with the swift blow that separated them, he realised
all that those days had done for him. He tried to
grasp the bearings of their position. Of course,
they would take her away to those social altitudes
of hers. She would become an inaccessible young
lady again. Would they let him say good-bye
to her?

How extraordinary it had all been ! He recalled
the moment when he had first seen her riding, with
the sunlight behind her, along the riverside road ; he
recalled that wonderful night at Bognor, remembering
it as if everything had been done of his own initiative.
" Brave, brave ! " she had called him. And after-
wards, when she came down to him in the morning,
kindly, quiet. But ought he to have persuaded her
then to return to her home? He remembered some
intention of the sort. Now these people snatched her
away from him as though he was scarcely fit to live
in the same world with her. No more he was ! He
felt he had presumed upon her worldly ignorance in
travelling with her day after day. She was so dainty,
so delightful, so serene. He began to recapitulate

312 The Wheels of Chance

her expressions, the light of her eyes, the turn of her
face . . .

He wasn't good enough to walk in the same road
with her. Nobody was. Suppose they let him say
good-bye to her; what could he say? That? But
they were sure not to let her talk to him alone ; her
mother would be there as, what was it? — Chaperone.
He'd never once had a chance of saying what he felt ;
indeed, it was only now he was beginning to realise
what he felt. Love ! he wouldn't presume. It was
worship. If only he could have one more chance.
He must have one more chance, somewhere, some-
how. Then he would pour out his soul to her — elo-
quently. He felt eloquently, and words would come.
He was dust under her feet . . .

His meditation was interrupted by the click of a
door handle, and Jessie appeared in the sunlight under
the verandah. " Come away from here," she said to
Hoopdriver, as he rose to meet her. "I'm going
home with them. We have to say good-bye."

Mr. Hoopdriver winced, opened and shut his
mouth, and rose without a word.

XL

AT first Jessie Milton and Mr. Hoopdriver walked
away from the hotel in silence. He heard a catch-
ing in her breath and glanced at her and saw her lips
pressed tight and a tear on her cheek. Her face was
hot and bright. She was looking straight before her.
He could think of nothing to say, and thrust his
hands in his pockets and looked away from her
intentionally. After a while she began to talk.
They dealt disjointedly with scenery first, and then
with the means of self-education. She took his
address at Antrobus's and promised to send him
some books. But even with that it was spiritless,
aching talk, Hoopdriver felt, for the fighting mood
was over. She seemed, to him, preoccupied with
the memories of her late battle, and that appearance
hurt him.

"It's the end," he whispered to himself. "It's
the end."

They went into a hollow and up a gentle wooded
slope, and came at last to a high and open space
overlooking a wide expanse of country. There, by

314 The Wheels of Chance

a common impulse, they stopped. She looked at
her watch — a little ostentatiously. They stared at
the billows of forest rolling away beneath them, crest
beyond crest, of leafy trees, fading at last into blue.

"The end " ran through his mind, to the exclusion
of all speakable thoughts.

"And so," she said, presently, breaking the silence,
"it comes to good-bye."

For half a minute he did not answer. Then he
gathered his resolution. "There is one thing I must
say."

"Well?" she said, surprised and abruptly forget-
ting the recent argument.

" I ask no return. But — "

Then he stopped. " I won't say it. It's no good.
It would be rot from me — now. I wasn't going to
say anything. Good-bye."

She looked at him with a startled expression in
her eyes. "No," she said. "But don't forget you
are going to work. Remember, brother Chris, you
are my friend. You will work. You are not a very
strong man, you know, now — you will forgive me
— nor do you know all you should. But what will
you be in six years' time?"

He stared hard in front of him still, and the lines
about his weak mouth seemed to strengthen. He
knew she understood what he could not say.

315

316 The Wheels of Chance

"I'll work," he said, concisely.

They stood side by side for a moment. Then he
said, with a motion of his head, "I won't come back
to them. Do you mind? Going back alone? "

She took ten seconds to think. "No," she said,
and held out her hand, biting her nether lip.
" Good-bye" she whispered.

He turned, with a white face, looked into her
eyes, took her hand limply, and then with a sudden
impulse, lifted it to his lips. She would have
snatched it away, but his grip tightened to her
movement. She felt the touch of his lips, and then
he had dropped her fingers and turned from her and
was striding down the slope. A dozen paces away
his foot turned in the lip of a rabbit hole, and he,
stumbled forward and almost fell. He recovered his
balance and went on, not looking back. He never
once looked back. She stared at his receding figure
until it was small and far below her, and then, the
tears running over her eyelids now, turned slowly,
and walked with her hands gripped hard together
behind her, towards Stoney Cross again.

"I did not know," she whispered to herself. "I
did not understand. Even now — No, I do not
understand."

THE ENVOY
XLI

So the story ends, dear Reader. Mr. Hoopdriver,
sprawling down there among the bracken, must
sprawl without our prying, I think, or listening to
what chances to his breathing. And of what came
of it all, of the six years and afterwards, this is no
place to tell. In truth, there is no telling it, for the
years have still to run. But if you see how a mere * /
counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot,
may come to feel the little insufficiencies of life, and
if he has to any extent won your sympathies, my end
is attained. (If it is not attained, may Heaven for-
give us both !) Nor will we follow this adventurous
young lady of ours back to her home at Surbiton, to
her new struggle against Widgery and Mrs. Milton
combined. For, as she will presently hear, that
devoted man has got his reward. For her, also,
your sympathies are invited.

The rest of this great holiday, too — five days there
are left of it — is beyond the limits of our design.

318

The Wheels of Chance 319

You see fitfully a slender figure in a dusty brown suit
and heather mixture stockings, and brown shoes
not intended to be cycled in, flitting Londonward
through Hampshire and Berkshire and Surrey, going
economically — for excellent reasons. Day by day
he goes on, riding fitfully and for the most part
through bye-roads, but getting a few miles to the
north-eastward every day. He is a narrow-chested
person, with a nose hot and tanned at the bridge
with unwonted exposure, and brown, red-knuckled
fists. A musing expression sits upon the face of this
rider, you observe. Sometimes he whistles noise-
lessly to himself, sometimes he speaks aloud, "a
juiced good try, anyhow!" you hear; and some-
times, and that too often for my liking, he looks
irritable and hopeless. "I know," he says, "I know.
It's over and done. It isn't in me. You ain't man
enough, Hoopdriver. Look at yer silly hands ! . . .
Oh, my God ! " and a gust of passion comes upon
him and he rides furiously for a space.

Sometimes again his face softens. "Anyhow, if
I'm not to see her — she's going to lend me books,"
he thinks, and gets such comfort as he can. Then
again; "Books! What's books?" Once or twice
triumphant memories of the earlier incidents nerve
his face for a while. " I put the ky-bosh on his little
game," he remarks. "I did that," and one might

320

The Wheels of Chance 321

even call him happy in these phases. And, by-the-
bye, the machine, you notice, has been enamel-
painted grey and carries a sonorous gong.

This figure passes through Basingstoke and Bag-
shot, Staines, Hampton, and Richmond. At last,
in Putney High Street, glowing with the warmth of
an August sunset and with all the 'prentice boys busy
shutting up shop, and the work girls going home,
and the shop folks peeping abroad, and the white
'buses full of late clerks and city folk rumbling home
to their dinners, we part from him. He is back.
To-morrow, the early rising, the dusting, and
drudgery, begin again — but with a difference, with
wonderful memories and still more wonderful desires
and ambitions replacing those discrepant dreams.

He turns out of the High Street at the corner,
dismounts with a sigh, and pushes his machine
through the gates of the Antrobus stable yard, as the
apprentice with the high collar holds them open.
There are words of greeting. "South Coast," you
hear; and "splendid weather — splendid." He
sighs. " Yes — swapped him off for a couple of
sovs. It's a juiced good machine."

The gate closes upon him with a slam, and he
vanishes from our ken.

THE END

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